Newsmaker: Forging a digital world one city at a time

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We're going to be working with Lucas and their applications team, Wild Brain and several other companies from DMAC. (We'll) bring a box to the company, figure out the networking thing for them so the artists and production team use it and give (us) feedback. We'll do it in such a way that it fosters co-productions with other companies around the world.

In Paris, their two or three biggest digital-effects houses want to participate. They'll take a module of development of it and be guinea pigs. And then we'll want to culminate with a global co-production that's using the tool.

Can we expect commercial projects or art to emerge from this?

Alvarado: The way the Digital Sister Cities lab is designed is to create patentable intellectual property. We want to do it in a way that it's solving a real problem in the next-generation environment, specifically targeted at next-generation Internet and the enabling tools around that.

Hopefully, at some point, someone will grab this tool and say, "I want to integrate that with X product" or "I want to start a four-person company that uses it." It could happen in Paris, Dublin or San Francisco.

When might we see Sebastian be released?

Alvarado: We're on a 12-month production cycle with it. We want to have a good alpha in the spring and a good beta in summer, then (we hope) someone will take it off our hands after that. There will be three or four projects in this pipeline at any one time.

We have this challenge now that we're getting good at engineering around these dedicated light paths, but we're missing a Mosaic--we don't have that interface that allows all kinds of people to take it to scale and drive interaction around the infrastructure. So we're trying to stimulate that.

How would you describe a digital city?

Alvarado: If we dissolve the word digital, it's a city made up of great diversity. It understands that the economy is driven by knowledge work. It has a need to protect openness. It has close working relationships with universities and respects the role of education, and it has a willingness to engage many partners.

An interesting comparison is California and Japan. They've had a weird 10 years or so, but in that time, Japan has been spending billions and billions of dollars on their technology infrastructure. And California has not, other than the research universities and CENIC.

What's the difference between the next-generation Internet and the first Internet?

Alvarado: The best description is synchronous fiber network. The name says what the difference is.

Right now, you can't do anything synchronous between two long-distance points with TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). With these new switches available, this new backbone and this new connectivity allows you to connect in a global environment as opposed to purchasing a direct wire at a real high cost. You can basically target an IP address in two places in the world and they connect together. And they have a wavelength of light that's dedicated--maybe going through all sorts of switch points--but it seamlessly routes with extremely low latency.

How do you commercialize that research-driven backbone (CENIC) while preserving its intended purpose?

Alvarado: This is the $10 trillion question. It's complicated. There are regulatory issues. But if cities want to be competitive, we have to leverage every available resource and build partnerships with providers. In an industry where margin is everything, you need to have every possible advantage, and speeding up the process is one advantage.

We need to bring the price down of fiber. Right now, it costs $15,000 to $20,000 a month for a gig connection because there's no scale in the marketplace.

How is this project funded?

Alvarado: We operate on a combination of grants. But it's not expensive. It's just a few of us, six or eight people on the engineering side, plus consultants from other universities who've worked with light path stuff.

What other projects are coming out of the Digital Sister Cities project?

Alvarado: One is "Brainstormer," a video game about brainstorming. It's kicking off this year at a middle school in East Oakland and a Muslim high school in New Delhi, India, in partnership with the American India Foundation. Students build their own characters in Maya (and brainstorm with each other across continents), and by the end of the year, they'll produce a video game based on the collaboration.

How does San Francisco stack up in terms of what's going on in the rest of the world?

Alvarado: San Francisco is making a noble effort. It's the one city in the world where, in the space of a mile, you can cross the 15 most innovative companies doing their thing, whatever that is. But as a country, we're not concerned enough about how much time, energy and money the rest of the world is spending to beat us at our own game. We have to motivate everyone into the conversation.

Then what are the top three most advanced digital cities?

Alvarado: The ones that I think reflect S.F. in interesting ways are Toronto, Paris and Shanghai. Vancouver's close, but (for) size and scale, I think Toronto's a little more important. It's going to spend more money promoting media than the state of California. Paris--Its digital cluster has a billion and a half euros to develop. There's no budget in the state of California for any of this. We really are depending on our grid, and the fact that we're close to Sand Hill (Road, an influential Silicon Valley address).

Toronto has a new media initiative, a cluster development happening, a waterfront project, a wireless initiative--They have connectivity. I would predict that Canada could become the new California. They've got three or four major cities on board, they're incredibly creative, have great universities, great connectivity and diversity--everything California has, except they have other things like oil. We need not to be afraid, but we need to be motivated.  

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