In the second of our winning Evening Press/York Writers essay competition entries, SIMON NEWBOLD, looks at the digital future

ONCE upon a time only the flakiest of saints had visions. They would go out to the wilderness, cut the protein intake and return with a blueprint for all our futures.

It would often be bad news such as the end of the world or worse.

Today every business needs a "mission"' and a "vision". Even city councils have to see the future in a hundred words or less and share it with their citizens. Corporate identity snake oil salesmen praise the vision as true and wondrous and offer a logo in homage.

Visions are just a way forward to get from here to there. But they do have to be good news, both in promise and fulfilment.

A decade ago, with railways hitting the buffers and chocolate beginning to melt away, York needed to create a future that worked.

The consultants put away the snake oil and decided that the cloudy "vision" and "mission" needed to be razor sharp and based on the most rational and logical practice - science and technology.

Their crystal balls were polished well as 21st century York has more jobs in science and new technology than tourism.

Young digital, creative companies cluster within the city walls. Craftsmen and women in nanotechnology nod across to the spirits of the Minster stonemasons and the bio-scientists have scones in Betty's. Worlds collide but there's no sound of an explosion, only people talking.

While the beautiful people of York are chattering at ground level over the ciabatta, families and couples watch the latest Hollywood and Bollywood movies upstairs at City Screen.

Below the city streets in the basement bar, a scientist talks chaos.

As rowers pull down the Ouse in straight and ordered lines, the audience hears about "chaos theory"' and how a butterfly fluttering its wings in the Amazon could cause a hurricane in Kyoto. 'What is its effect as it passes over York?'

The scientist pushes the pendulum across a pin board of magnets and it jerks randomly in constant motion. "It's like a drunk trying to get home. Three steps forward, one sideways, two back. Tell me what time he arrives home?"

It's impossible. But this regular York meeting to discuss science is a symptom that the city's vision is possible.

Across town, a digital media company draws a full house in a sushi bar showcasing its work for the new visitor centre at Whitby Abbey, the place where the grandees of the early church decided the date of Easter and kick-started the chocolate industry.

North of York, the Central Science Laboratory, with two thousand scientists, is sharing experiments with colleagues in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Bombay.

Science City is now the top layer of a city with rich deposits.

Popular with visitors with missions since the Romans and Vikings, York has always been a gateway to new stages of city living but always passing through chaos and apparent endings.

Now sitting exhausted by the Minster next to a fallen column, Constantine once announced that he "could control the whole of England from here."

Pushing the boundaries of empire, York was close to the northern frontier of a tired imperial world.

Straight roads, sanitation, drains and fountains offered a clear and ordered view of the world. Constantine's conversion to Christianity undercut this view.

Once regarded as a minor religious sect worshipping a common criminal it grew to challenge the greatest empire of the known world.

The foot soldiers patrolling the city walls in a wet climate and dreaming of anchovy paste and olive oil must have puzzled over rumours of a collapsing capital city back home. Today, a message from an Internet caf could have confirmed the barbarian incursions were nightmares come true.

Pillage was popular with the Vikings but so was city building, creativity and family. Jorvik combs, jewellery and inscriptions suggest that horned helmets and landing craft brought chaos but the invaders created and settled into an ordered world built to endure.

The "weightless economy" has come to York. Locomotives and chocolate are either heavy or make you heavy.

New ideas bring uncertainties but they can move around faster than light. If the city is to create a new legacy for global visitors it needs a new map for the journey and a 21st century city "vision" is the nearest we can get to the treasure.

Simon Newbold lives in Gilling, near York

Updated: 11:33 Tuesday, January 14, 2003