“No offence taken,” replied his neighbour, a younger man, perhaps in his early forties, who had introduced himself as Mikael. “I was curious, I suppose, when I saw your notice in the foyer. Mostly I wanted to put a face to the name; I hadn’t seen it anywhere on the networks.”

“I don’t use them much.”

Johannes shifted his position on the bench that stood in front of the Brunnshög apartment block where he lived, trying to put as much of himself as possible in the spring sunlight, and clasping his hands together in a way that he hoped didn’t betray his discomfort. Since moving here from the house he’d shared with his late wife Bella', he’d come to feel increasingly lonely and isolated, but the social life of the building—the whole neighbourhood, even—seemed out of reach, as if it were playing out entirely behind a sheet of glass, or in a room to which he couldn’t find the door.

He knew, on some level, that he needed to get out there, to get involved—but where was ‘there’? A bookish man, never much given to spontaneous socialisation, Johannes found himself turning to his library for answers and, for the first time in his life, finding none: the books on their silent shelves just turned their spines to face him, and he realised that he’d lost more than just his wife when Malin died.

In something close to desperation, he’d concluded that the problem with his new home was that—to quote his beloved Virgina Woolf—“there was no ‘there’ there”. Maybe he could find others like him by suggesting that they work together to make a place to meet and spend time together? So he’d written a little note, asking if anyone else would be interested in starting some sort of community garden, and inviting them to meet him today, here, out in front of the house. “To tell the truth,” he continued, “I avoided these networks almost completely, for a very long time. It was easy for me, perhaps—I am a docent in literature, you see. Well, I was; I’m retired now. But they never seemed necessary. Email was enough, more than enough!”

“An enviable position, in a way. You’re the last of a dying breed,” replied Mikael absently, his thumbs busy on the screen of his phone, before glancing across at Johannes, slightly abashed. “Uh, not literally. Sorry.”

“I think I have a while to go yet, young man! But you’re right—I’m a bit of a dinosaur, I suppose. I guess no one else living in our block is interested in my idea for a community garden. It’s a bit of an old-person project.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Mikael, laying his phone face down beside him on the bench. “I think a lot of people would be into it. But you’ve got to go where they are, you know?” “And where would that be?” asked Johannes, already knowing the answer. Mikael smiled, and tapped a finger on the back of his phone.

#

“OK, we’ve activated your identity,” Mikael explained. “It’s tied to your personnummer, so it was kind of always there waiting for you.”

Johannes frowned at the screen in his hand. “And now I can access all these networks, can I?”

“You can request to join them. Here, look—this is the network for our building. Just tap there, and now here... there you go. Now you just need to accept the terms and conditions.”

Johannes thumbed his way through a seemingly endless scroll of text in a font almost too small for his reading glasses. “What am I agreeing to, exactly?”

“Most of it’s standard boilerplate, nothing to worry about. The important bit’s at the bottom, where you agree to the use of your data by other members of the network.”

“Which data? What if I don’t want people using it?”

“You can always withdraw your consent later. As for which data, well, it’s very granular. Depends on the network, really. The one for our building, it’s mostly whatever you choose to say in the forums and threads, plus a certain amount of your comings and goings, as reported by the telemetry of your phone against the wifi—you know, when you’re at home, when you’re not.”

“Now, look, I have to say this aspect of these networks makes me quite uncomfortable—their always wanting to know everything about you. If I let people know when I’m out of my apartment, they could decide to burgle me!”

“But you’re only sharing with the other residents of the building, Johannes. Your neighbours aren’t going to burgle you, are they? Besides, the data can only be used by applications if the whole network has agreed to grant them permission. It’s like...” Mikael frowned, looking into the distance. “It’s a bit like a fortress. You join the network, you pool your data with the others, and then you decide together what data is allowed in or out, and what you get in exchange for that access.”

“It all seems very... transactional,” Johannes said.

“Exactly,” Mikael replied. “A lot of us coders and developers, we fought very hard for the laws that make this possible. It has to be transactional, because that’s the logic of the system—transactions and exchanges are just how networks work, really. But this is a big improvement on the old way, where the big companies like Google could set the terms, and all you could do was agree or stay offline. Now you can decide who gets to use our data, and how... and you can join up with others and make those decisions collectively. Think of it as like föreningar—like registered associations, but based on data.”

“At least in associations, you could actually talk to people.”

“But you can talk to people through the networks, Johannes! You don’t need to be with them in person; you don’t need to be available at the same time. It’s so much more efficient!”

Johannes sighed, remembering how the word ‘efficient’ had come to signify oncoming changes in university administration that were going to ask more of his time than he wanted to give. But this was just how things worked these days, he supposed. And if it would let him do things he wanted to do—if it could get him closer to getting his garden idea off the ground—then he guessed he would have to learn to live with it.

#

After a few weeks, Johannes felt like he had a basic grasp of how the building network functioned, and—nearly three years after he’d moved in—he’d finally learned the names of most of his neighbours. There was still a lot he didn’t understand, and he found himself mostly going along with the consensus of the group on the issues and proposals that came up. Meanwhile, Mikael dropped by his apartment a couple of times a week, living up to his promise to “show him the ropes”.

The younger man was a programmer of some sort, attached to the ESS just up the hill, though the details of his work were lost on Johannes, who had naively assumed that a particle accelerator would be more like a machine than a computer. Mikael’s life—his whole world, it sometimes seemed—revolved around “code”, as he preferred to call it, and his explanations could feel like a blizzard of technical terms, an alien language. So far as Johannes could tell, he was either at his desk at the ESS, or exploring some virtual universe up in his apartment, or on his way from one to the other. It wasn’t clear to Johannes how big a difference was involved, other than the place you were sat.

But Mikael was patient, or perhaps just persistent, and with his help Johannes was slowly getting a sense of the much wider, deeper world that could be found in these ‘digital layers’—as well as a sense of what they’d come to replace.

While he put together a fika for them to take on the balcony—with fresh kanelbullar from the cafe-cum-bakery, just across the tram tracks on the other side of Brunnshögsgatan—Johannes had pointed out a nearby area where a new block of development was starting to take shape out beyond the leafy groves of Solbjersparken, and wondered aloud what was going on with it.

A few weeks earlier, he’d taken a walk over that way to see what he could see, but all he found was a building site behind tall white hoardings with no pictures or logos, just those black square dotty things that had gradually replaced the old barcodes on food packages. A small group of younger folk were stood on the pavement, staring at the hoardings and the site through their various devices—one of them was even wearing some sort of headset that sat over their eyes and ears—and arguing animatedly in terms that Johannes had found largely impenetrable. Mikael explained that there was a network where you could inspect the plans for the development, explore renderings of the buildings, and follow the progress of the project.

“I should have guessed! But shouldn’t the municipality be in charge of that?”

“In an ideal world, yes,” Mikael explained. “But Lund was moving too slowly, and the people couldn’t get involved in the process. So the contractor and the landlord put together a network agreement that lets you engage.”

“In exchange for my data, I assume,” said Johannes.

“You’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you? Yeah, you let them have your data—but then you get access to theirs. Plus your data will help shape the services they build into the new block, and across the whole neighbourhood. It’s like a user-needs survey, only much more accurate, and much less intrusive.”

Johannes poured the coffee. “That depends on how you define ‘intrusive’.”

Mikael shook his head. “No, no—it’s all voluntary, isn’t it? Governments and companies have always collected data, since long before computers were a thing. The difference is that now you’re aware of it. I understand that it must feel uncomfortable... my generation, we went through the same thing you’re going through now, just much earlier, back in the 2010s. Snowden, Manning, Wikileaks, Cambridge Analytica, all that stuff. That’s why we fought for the legislation layer—for the right to know what we were giving up, and what we were getting in return.”

Not for the first time, Johannes wondered how much else he’d missed—and contemplated the old proverb that claimed ignorance was bliss. He’d always known this stuff was out there; hard not to, really, given the way computers had wormed their way into the university back at the start of the century. But he’d managed to dodge most of it, without ever exactly planning to. The machines came late to literature scholarship, by which time Johannes could already see retirement looming. He’d had his research assistants and postdocs help him set up the systems he couldn’t avoid, the “mooks” and the “learning platforms” and whatever else was that year’s version of “the future of education”. A colleague had once described him, in tones of genuine admiration, as a ruthless Luddite—but he’d never really thought of it as any sort of principled resistance. All he’d been trying to do, in truth, was protect the precious hours he could spend with his books.

As for social media, he’d never seen the need or felt the desire. Bella had leapt into it, communal creature that she was, and he’d been more than happy to leave it to her to know what was happening, to arrange guests and visits and celebrations, just as she’d been happy not to have him spend half a week thoughtfully composing thank-you letters or invitations to parties. “A very satisfactory division of labour,” she’d say, shooing him off to his study.

It had been a good system. But then she was gone, and then came the voluntary redundancies of the late Twenties… and now here he was, with too much time on his hands, alone in a world that he could no longer navigate.

#

As the coffee pot slowly emptied, Mikael showed Johannes how to investigate the neighbourhood network, how to look at the plans and schedules for the new block, even how to suggest stops and timings for the bus routes. It seemed like you could get involved in the most minute details, if you were keen to do so.

“You must forgive an old man’s single-mindedness, Mikael,” he said eventually, “but the thing I really care about is my garden idea.”

There was a little patch of ground between Johannes’s building and the next block along: a strip maybe five meters wide, currently covered with wild grass and a smattering of wildflowers, as if the developer had forgotten it was there. Running roughly east-west, it got quite a bit of sun despite being caught between the buildings. Immediately on moving in to his new apartment, Johannes had been taken with the idea of cultivating it, making it pretty, perhaps putting in some benches in the shadier spots. He was very fond of his balcony, which had a fairly spectacular view, but he missed being able to sit in a shared space at street level and just be with people, as he’d delighted in doing back in his days on campus. He thought that a little garden might encourage such socialisation in an area that seemed rather lacking in it—as well as finding him some friends.

“Of course,” said Mikael. “I’ll help you, as promised. The first thing you need is a collective—your own little network, just for your garden project. Did you put a note in the building net about it, like I suggested? OK, now open it up and see who’s interested.”

Somewhat to Johannes’s surprise, three of his neighbours had requested to join his network, as had another four in the neighbouring building. There were names, and little tiny photographs, some of whose faces he thought maybe he recognised from the neighbourhood. There were also links through which, Mikael had explained, he could find out more about them—depending on how much they’d chosen to share, of course. Johannes resolved to take a closer look later, not wanting to spoil the excitement. Seven would-be community gardeners! That was probably enough to get started, Mikael suggested. “So now we submit a request to the municipality, I suppose?”

“Eventually, yes,” Mikael explained, “but first you’ll need to find out how to write a request that works. Think of it as being like all those academic grant applications you used to write—it helps to get advice from someone who’s been successful before you, right?”

Grant writing was not the most comforting comparison that Johannes could have thought of, but he supposed that the analogy was sound: if there’s something you want to do, you have to jump through the right hoops. Mikael showed him how to query the wider municipal network for successful community garden groups, and to ask for their advice on making a successful application. While they were waiting on responses to those queries, they set up materials-wanted notices in the local circular economy boards: seeds, soil, unwanted garden furniture.

The materials matches came in quickly—”it’s all done by algorithms,” Mikael explained—and showed that getting the stuff they’d need would be the easy bit. Johannes thought of it as Blocket on steroids: there was plenty of unwanted stuff just waiting for someone to make use of it, and some of the offers came with free delivery. Apparently there were tax incentives for commercial entities to hand on extra materials for free to community projects—some EU thing, Mikael said, aimed at keeping useful stuff out of landfills.

The application advice was a little longer coming, but within a few days Johannes had seen a handful of successful applications (plus two earlier failures, useful examples of what not to do), and in the process found out about four community garden projects in the northeast of Lund municipality. Chatting through the networks, he arranged to visit these gardens and their creators, who were often people of a similar age to himself—people who also missed spending time with people in person, and who had found ways through the networks to build the spaces where that could happen. With their advice and moral support, and some help from the neighbours in his own little network, he made lots of notes, just like he’d used to when he was still an active researcher, and patiently assembled his authorisation application to the municipality.

#

On a glorious, sunny afternoon that August, Johannes found himself cutting the blue and yellow ribbon that one of his younger neighbours had set up for the occasion. It wasn’t exactly a formal opening—he and his fellow gardeners had been making use of the space for relaxation in between all the digging and the planting they’d been doing all through the summer—but it was nice to have a bit of ceremony nonetheless. Another neighbour was going round with a tray of snaps in mismatched shot-glasses, and a small delegation from the other community garden projects in the area had brought gifts of cuttings, seeds and spare garden tools. As he raised his glass in a toast, Johannes noticed a face he’d not seen for a while.

“Well, look at this,” said Mikael, smiling. “You go away for the summer, and you come back to find a garden that never existed before you left! I guess the application got approved, then?” “It did indeed,” replied Johannes, passing Mikael a snaps.

“On the first attempt, too,” said one of the delegates from the other gardens, who was standing nearby. “Wish we’d had him on board when we were writing ours!”

“But I had the opportunity to learn from your failures, my dear,” said Johannes modestly. “And I’d have never gotten to that stage without the help of young Mikael, here.”

“Ah, you were pretty easy, as students go,” said Mikael. “What was it you told me about motivated learning? If someone’s got a goal, they’ll learn whatever they need to reach it. And look at you now! Pretty soon you’ll have the whole city knocking on your inbox, looking for your help—a true master of the networks.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Johannes with a smile, looking around at the neighbours and fellow gardeners he’d been working alongside for the whole summer. “I think that this is about as much network as I ever needed or wanted, really.”

“Well, you built it, so you should enjoy it,” said Mikael with a shrug, before raising his glass of snaps. “As for the rest of the networks, I still say: you don’t know what you’re missing. Skål!” Johannes watched the younger man head back into the apartment block, and reflected that Mikael was probably right: he didn’t know what he was missing.

Then he looked around at his neighbours and friends and his little garden, and decided that maybe Mikael didn’t know what he was missing, either.

SOURCE SCENARIO: SYMBIOTIC NEIGHBORHOOD

By 2035, the municipality of Lund has fallen short of its own goals regarding sustainable and socially connected communities, and is struggling to foster circular economy activities. Meanwhile, demographic shifts and urban development are further eroding municipal services.

Other actors and groups have taken the initiative, resulting in a range of competing digital services. Among these is a system built by citizens which is informed by the "cypherpunk" ethos, which advocates the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a means of effecting social and political change.

This system is enabled through a broad legislation layer, and allows citizens to control access to their own data, and to control how data is provided to them. They still use services provided by big corporations and the city, but have access to all of their data as gathered by those providers. This legal infrastructure allows different groups to build service layers on top of data systems that address the needs of the nascent circular economy.

Example applications might include: a development firm pooling with other local businesses to create an app through which people can track the progress of a new development and access its services, in exchange for their own data-trails; a group of neighbours developing a community garden acquire necessary materials and expertise through network connection systems; elderly residents with health or loneliness issues can connect with other residents for support and companionship.