As an inroads to discussing JCR Licklider’s Man-Computer-Symbiosis of 1960, it would be interesting to analyze the simultaneous “tetrad” of effects as outlined in MacLuhan’s Laws of Media of 1992 to that theoretically supreme example of new media prefigured so presciently in Licklider’s writing, the internet.
Enhance – The internet clearly enhances the velocity and volume of the exchange of information in a multitude of digital forms, those being primarily audio, video, text and image.
Obsolesce – The internet tends to obsolesce those forms of communication or information transfer which now have a digital equivalent. The easiest example is e-mail which changes dramatically the role of the traditional paper mail service (now referred to as “snail mail”). An interesting post-e-mail phenomenon has been that companies such as Netflix have been able to find adaptive reuses for the USPS that expand and exploit its potential beyond that of a basic message delivery service.
Recurrence – I would argue that the recurrence of a suppressed fantasy of democratic culture is engendered by the internet. The internet is simply too broad and too open of a forum for a multitude of agendas, desires and opinions not to be expressed. Of course internet access has initially been available to only the most privileged. But, as time goes by, as bandwidth becomes cheaper, as the means and modes of expressing oneself become disseminated and more importantly modified by new user groups, the internet could become a more highly charged political space, not merely mimicking the partisan divisions and representations of the traditional media (which tend towards bullet-pointed filtrations) but rather micro-broadcasting a disparate array of differentiated agendas, within which the ultra fine silt of individualized desire might start to emulate the utopian dream of true representative democracy.
Reversal – The immersive interactivity of the internet that allows for the emergent political potential here previously argued has embedded within it a simultaneously regressive character, that postmodern condition best described by Baudrillaird, that culture could become a completely simulated experience.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Media
The media brings the issue that what is the limitation of human activity. From McLuhan’s article, all man-made material things can be treated as extensions of what man once did with his body or some specialized part of body, men start using themselves as media. And when it goes with scientific developments, it’s hard to tell where the media come from. After then as McLuhan raised the issue, sometimes we could see the debate whether media is from man’s biological or psychological means or technical ingenuity. And from this argue, man cannot trust himself and it cause the radical change of identity.
To identify the man, mcluhan says the transformational effects of our artificial organ- they generate totally new condition of environmental service and or life- these are the concerns of Law of Media’ (p97, Law of Media). He tries to bring the issue about law of media that provide a means of identifying the properties of and actions exerted upon ourselves by our technologies and media and artifacts. (p98, Law of Media). It’s time consuming argue that man is genuine human even though he has the transmitted organ. The artefact is the active and utter if human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground. And the artifact has the meaning as a media.
In the Laura Burd Schiavo article, how the human eye became the source of image tool. From the concept of perspective, man percept the depth of space. It brings the question about the status and reliability of vision (p114, Laura Burd Schiavo).The body became as an active producer of sensation and it gives other possibility to see the view of world. The science of vision could become less geometric and less predictable. And it obscured the boundary of real image of the world. Photographers could reform the image and we could see the world as we want even though true facts are sometimes hidden and only the surface are exposed.
To identify the man, mcluhan says the transformational effects of our artificial organ- they generate totally new condition of environmental service and or life- these are the concerns of Law of Media’ (p97, Law of Media). He tries to bring the issue about law of media that provide a means of identifying the properties of and actions exerted upon ourselves by our technologies and media and artifacts. (p98, Law of Media). It’s time consuming argue that man is genuine human even though he has the transmitted organ. The artefact is the active and utter if human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground. And the artifact has the meaning as a media.
In the Laura Burd Schiavo article, how the human eye became the source of image tool. From the concept of perspective, man percept the depth of space. It brings the question about the status and reliability of vision (p114, Laura Burd Schiavo).The body became as an active producer of sensation and it gives other possibility to see the view of world. The science of vision could become less geometric and less predictable. And it obscured the boundary of real image of the world. Photographers could reform the image and we could see the world as we want even though true facts are sometimes hidden and only the surface are exposed.
Media/ Interface
Mcluhan is saying Media observes human operation and affects them in every place where they are implicated in his article. Like he is saying, if a human artifact is not merely an implement for working upon something, but an extension of our body, affected by the artificial addition of organs, Media can called the human extended eye itself.
But, he emphasizes evolutionary standpoints of media. ‘The transformational effects of our artificial organ- they generate totally new condition of environmental service and or life- these are the concerns of Law of Media’ (p97, Law of Media).
This view would be valuable as the sense of reading both deadly and advantageous power of media generating unfathomable consequence.
In the Licklide’s article, concerning the separable function of men and computer for Man-Computer Symbioses, Licklider mentions ‘The information-processing equipment will convert hypotheses into models and test the model against data’ (p58, Man-Computer Symbioses). And, he assumes that digesting and converting data is the role of computer for successful symbioses. Letting computers facilitate formulative thinking and men’s infilling the gaps between particular circumstance and program, sounds great combination for ideal symbiotic cooperation.
Yet, I am curious that how a symbiotic cooperation with computer is actually possible in terms of time sharing.
If computer which is expected in Man-Computer Symbiosis is not just semi-automatic system and it is extended human arms and eye, it might perform like Media. With that sense, I am suspicious we can we easily ignore Laws of Media-interface, of the resonant interval as ‘where the action is’ in all structures, whether chemical, psychic, or social, involves touch (p102, Law of Media).
But, he emphasizes evolutionary standpoints of media. ‘The transformational effects of our artificial organ- they generate totally new condition of environmental service and or life- these are the concerns of Law of Media’ (p97, Law of Media).
This view would be valuable as the sense of reading both deadly and advantageous power of media generating unfathomable consequence.
In the Licklide’s article, concerning the separable function of men and computer for Man-Computer Symbioses, Licklider mentions ‘The information-processing equipment will convert hypotheses into models and test the model against data’ (p58, Man-Computer Symbioses). And, he assumes that digesting and converting data is the role of computer for successful symbioses. Letting computers facilitate formulative thinking and men’s infilling the gaps between particular circumstance and program, sounds great combination for ideal symbiotic cooperation.
Yet, I am curious that how a symbiotic cooperation with computer is actually possible in terms of time sharing.
If computer which is expected in Man-Computer Symbiosis is not just semi-automatic system and it is extended human arms and eye, it might perform like Media. With that sense, I am suspicious we can we easily ignore Laws of Media-interface, of the resonant interval as ‘where the action is’ in all structures, whether chemical, psychic, or social, involves touch (p102, Law of Media).
Media/Interface
Media/Interface
Bin Wang
The world is subjective, but not objective. Obviously the world in the human being’s eyes is totally different with the one in animals’ eyes. The world is also different in different people’s eyes. I think it is not important what the difference we can see through camera and stereoscope, because what the world really is is less important than how we see and understand it.
When we see something behind a fence or a panel with holes, we can see clearly what we want to see, however, if we use a camera, it will focus on the fence or panel automatically. The most important function of our eyes is that they can choose and adjust. So does our brain. As Schiavo’s article mentioned, “the fact that shifting ideological and philosophical meanings were not wholly constrained by or contained in the structure of the medium makes us turn for explanation to culture.”, medium are only tools through which we could see and understand the world better.
The articles talked about everything but architecture. It forces me to ask, “What’s the relation between media and architecture”. J.Z.Young put it, “all of man’s artifacts-whether language, or laws, or ideas and hypotheses, or tools, or clothing, or computers-are extensions of the physical human body or the mind.” In other words, the development of medium is the development of human body. Everything we invented is part of our body. Architecture should not be an exception.
The contradiction is that after we invented and built something, including architecture, they also became part of the world. Hence medium, built with the intension to understand, also become the things that need to be understood. Probably this is the real meaning of “media”.
Bin Wang
The world is subjective, but not objective. Obviously the world in the human being’s eyes is totally different with the one in animals’ eyes. The world is also different in different people’s eyes. I think it is not important what the difference we can see through camera and stereoscope, because what the world really is is less important than how we see and understand it.
When we see something behind a fence or a panel with holes, we can see clearly what we want to see, however, if we use a camera, it will focus on the fence or panel automatically. The most important function of our eyes is that they can choose and adjust. So does our brain. As Schiavo’s article mentioned, “the fact that shifting ideological and philosophical meanings were not wholly constrained by or contained in the structure of the medium makes us turn for explanation to culture.”, medium are only tools through which we could see and understand the world better.
The articles talked about everything but architecture. It forces me to ask, “What’s the relation between media and architecture”. J.Z.Young put it, “all of man’s artifacts-whether language, or laws, or ideas and hypotheses, or tools, or clothing, or computers-are extensions of the physical human body or the mind.” In other words, the development of medium is the development of human body. Everything we invented is part of our body. Architecture should not be an exception.
The contradiction is that after we invented and built something, including architecture, they also became part of the world. Hence medium, built with the intension to understand, also become the things that need to be understood. Probably this is the real meaning of “media”.
sha_media_interface
In an age of information design and user interface design, it is interesting to turn back to an article like Licklider's Man-Computer Symbiosis, where the meeting point between men and machines is approached cautiously, almost self-consciously. Small points like "the purposes of this paper are to present the concept and, hopefully, to foster..." or "that assumption may require justification" reinforce the hesitant tone taken by Licklider presenting this article to his peers.
What he is proposing is fascinating, that through each sides' strengths and weaknesses the man-computer relationship can become finely tuned and optimized. In some ways it reminds me of the CAD vs BIM tools, where the program's responsibility is to keep consistent and update information which enables the user to focus more on the changes needed to be made.
In Mcluhan's article, Mcluhan shows how the interface of a mechanism changes the perception of the action (bomb vs petrol, tusk vs spear). This reminds me of a recent post by iA, on the idea of interface as brand. In it, iA writes about how the iPod's (and potentially the iPhone's) success is based around the interface/brand, and how competitors have failed because all they have done so far is to mimic the interface. "Copies can’t “kill” the original if the original is that protoypical." This contemporary view of interface as a realm of advertising or branding shows how entwined the man-computer symbiosis has really become. It reminds me of Alan Kay's comment that people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware -- the idea that interface and interaction can actually drive the machine, much like Schiavo's description of the discovery of the eye as a mechanism for sight and then the subsequent process of replicating and rediscovering the machine as a mechanism for "viewing pleasure."
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/the-interface-of-a-cheeseburger
What he is proposing is fascinating, that through each sides' strengths and weaknesses the man-computer relationship can become finely tuned and optimized. In some ways it reminds me of the CAD vs BIM tools, where the program's responsibility is to keep consistent and update information which enables the user to focus more on the changes needed to be made.
In Mcluhan's article, Mcluhan shows how the interface of a mechanism changes the perception of the action (bomb vs petrol, tusk vs spear). This reminds me of a recent post by iA, on the idea of interface as brand. In it, iA writes about how the iPod's (and potentially the iPhone's) success is based around the interface/brand, and how competitors have failed because all they have done so far is to mimic the interface. "Copies can’t “kill” the original if the original is that protoypical." This contemporary view of interface as a realm of advertising or branding shows how entwined the man-computer symbiosis has really become. It reminds me of Alan Kay's comment that people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware -- the idea that interface and interaction can actually drive the machine, much like Schiavo's description of the discovery of the eye as a mechanism for sight and then the subsequent process of replicating and rediscovering the machine as a mechanism for "viewing pleasure."
http://www.informationarchitects.jp/the-interface-of-a-cheeseburger
Media/Interface
Architecture 209X, Spring 2007
Words and Cities: The rhetoric and meaning of statistically improbable phrases
Nicholas De Monchaux
Qing Wang
Media/Interface
It is interesting that both Man-Computer Symbiosis and Laws of Media treat machine/computer/tool/weapon/the extension of our human being as another independent individual. By contrast with the common senses which human being invented those tools and they serve us, both of two readings emphasize on the independence and interaction of the interrelationship. In Licklider’s article, he interpreted the current problems of computation devices and the reasons they need be shifted. The computers were designed to solve the problems by pre-determined programs or formulas. They are used to do the tedious repetitive works for people who normally are considered low efficient in that kind work. All of those performances of computers rely on human-designed pre-determined program and formulas. Computers only do what you designed in advance. They execute only one or few commands every time but in an extremely fast speed. They can find the answer of a set question much faster than human brain. However, the problem is sometimes that it is harder to find the question rather than the answer. Once computers can participate into the question-finding jobs, the process of solving a problem will be accelerated dramatically. On the contrary of optimistic thinking of Licklider’s article, Laws of Media starts with a much shadowy tones about the influence of media. It implies that the inventions of tools make people distrust and isolated psychologically. Artificial weapons as one of human body’s extension make people cruder. The more advance the weapon is, the less sympathetic people are. The analogical influence happens on the relationship between people and media. The detachment of people and physical reality enhances the deconstruction of social identity. “Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.” Based on that provocative narrative, artists (or architects?) have been described as the counter-force to resist the negative impact from media. “Without the artist’s intervention man merely adapts to his technologies and become their servo-mechanism. …the role of art is to liberate man from the robot status imposed by adjusting to technologies.” It recalled me some familiar ideas that art should save the society when the
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Interfaces and iPhones
I remember reading Descartes for an undergraduate class in philosophy—the last philosophy class I ever took. The answers conjured up by Descartes to the very questions that led me to take the class (i.e. what is reality and are perceptions real) I found to be beyond tedious. Descartes, for all his brilliant arguments, failed to recognize what any high school biology class made clear: the eyeball is an interface to the brain. By using the history of the stereoscope and camera to map our understanding of the how the human eye works, Schiavo traces our understanding of the eye as an interface, or as dictionary.com defines it, “a common boundary or interconnection between systems, equipment, concepts, or human beings.” In Schiavo’s words, “creating a situation in which we “see” that which is not really there, the stereoscope insinuated an arbitrary relationship between stimulus and sensation.” This means that the two are related in that the interface othrough which a stimulus is received will certainly affect its sensation.
In McLuhan’s “Laws of Media,” this argument is extended to “all man’s artifacts – whether language, or laws, or ideas and hypotheses, or tools, or clothing, or computers – are extensions of the physical human body or mind.” Certainly the stereoscope falls into this group, as do all other devices, such as guns, bombs, cars and birth control. McLuhan’s realization that “man has developed extensions for practically everything he used to do with his body” is not nearly as fascinating as how this has affected social relationships. His cited analogy between the emotional differences between a solider killing a child with petrol and a match versus dropping napalm from an airplane represents how the interface between two people affects emotions. In the case of the bomb, all senses (our integrated interfaces) are removed from the subject: the bomber is not going to smell the burning flesh, hear the screams of agony, or see the carnage up close. Unlike the stereoscope, the effect of the artificial interface no longer creates the same experience as the original.
This makes me consider the new iPhone by Apple. Rumors of its existence have been circulating through blogs for years, but until several months ago it was only subject of speculation. Part of the reason for wait was the extensive research and development of the phone’s interface. The importance of how the iPhone’s surface felt was essential; it could not smudge, it needed to be perfectly touch sensitive with an appealing surface, it needed to be intuitive, etc. The inverse of the bomb, the iPhone—a remote interface between two people conversing—was developed to compliment the interaction between natural interfaces (e.g. touch) and artificial media. This recalls Licklider’s “man-computer symbiosis.” If Licklider had seen the iPhone, his hope that “human brains and and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly” would certainly have come to fruition. That “the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought” is maybe not so clear: an awful lot of automobile accidents happen as someone is arguing over a cell phone.
In McLuhan’s “Laws of Media,” this argument is extended to “all man’s artifacts – whether language, or laws, or ideas and hypotheses, or tools, or clothing, or computers – are extensions of the physical human body or mind.” Certainly the stereoscope falls into this group, as do all other devices, such as guns, bombs, cars and birth control. McLuhan’s realization that “man has developed extensions for practically everything he used to do with his body” is not nearly as fascinating as how this has affected social relationships. His cited analogy between the emotional differences between a solider killing a child with petrol and a match versus dropping napalm from an airplane represents how the interface between two people affects emotions. In the case of the bomb, all senses (our integrated interfaces) are removed from the subject: the bomber is not going to smell the burning flesh, hear the screams of agony, or see the carnage up close. Unlike the stereoscope, the effect of the artificial interface no longer creates the same experience as the original.
This makes me consider the new iPhone by Apple. Rumors of its existence have been circulating through blogs for years, but until several months ago it was only subject of speculation. Part of the reason for wait was the extensive research and development of the phone’s interface. The importance of how the iPhone’s surface felt was essential; it could not smudge, it needed to be perfectly touch sensitive with an appealing surface, it needed to be intuitive, etc. The inverse of the bomb, the iPhone—a remote interface between two people conversing—was developed to compliment the interaction between natural interfaces (e.g. touch) and artificial media. This recalls Licklider’s “man-computer symbiosis.” If Licklider had seen the iPhone, his hope that “human brains and and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly” would certainly have come to fruition. That “the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought” is maybe not so clear: an awful lot of automobile accidents happen as someone is arguing over a cell phone.
Media Interface
“Man the tool-making animal has long been engaged in extending one or another of his sense organs in such a manner as to disturb all of his other senses and faculties” J.Z. Young writes. Mans strive for stimulations, external or internal, is to break up the unison of action of the brain.
In our age man has developed extensions for almost everything he used to do with his body. The ‘laws of media’ reading argues that “all man-made material things can be treated as extensions of what man once did with his body or some specialized part of his body”.
Mans creation of new environments will lead to the changes of man himself. A new service environment will modify the very nature and image of people who use it. As electric media booms people becomes detached from mere bodily or physical reality. In this IT-era the personal and community values disappears in a rapidly increasing pace. I am actually very glad that I have had the privilege to live in the pre-internet world and experience the change of modes to communicate.
The Laws of media reading further stresses the main characteristic of man to be the communication as a tool itself.
In the Stereoscope reading Burd Schiavo writes “that media do not function as neutral systems for the storage and communication of information or opinion. She further quotes Jean Baudrillard; “media are not coefficients but effectors of ideology”.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Anders response
Duncan Watts starts his article with a series of questions. I really like this manner of writing as it capture my attention straight away. I want to know the answer of these questions. All his questions are the same version of one question; “How does individual behaviour aggregate to collective behaviour?” Watts suggests that sometimes the bigger mass is easier to understand than the complicated individual itself, as long as you ignore the more complicated individual details. Knowing the behaviour of the individuals does not necessary help us understanding the way of the group. At the levels of groups, systems and populations a new phenomena can emerge. Individuals in a large system can generate greater complexity than the individuals themselves.
Jane Jacobs uses the city as the principle of emergence. “Cities happen to be problems in organized complexity” Jacobs writes (p433). She goes on and refers to Dr Weaver who suggests that cities consist of a number of situations all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways. Jane Jacobs implies this reasoning to city planning and recognizes the problem of just looking at a few factors individual instead of looking at the city and reasoning from particulars to the general (rather than reverse).
Gould and Lewontin writes in their critique of the adaptationist programme that organisms must be analysed as integrated wholes. They further points out that in an integrated whole the “constraints themselves (between individuals) become more interesting and more important in delimiting pathways of change than the selective force that may mediate change when it occurs”.
So, in trying to end my response in the manner Watts starts his article, with a question: Is an emergent system something that is created with a number of individual parts that together form a more complicated whole? Or is it just a mass of whatever, together in a system?
Emergence
Both Jacobs and Gould critique the existing models of thinking about progress in their respective fields. Interestingly the two authors characterize these existing models of thought as inhabiting two opposite poles of the philosophical spectrum. Each posits a completely different existing paradigm for how man considers his relationship to nature. For Jacobs the existing model of thought about how cities progress is flawed because man has completely detached himself from nature. She writes on pg. 443, “Underlying the jejunue belief in ‘the dark and foreboding’ irrationality of chaos of cities, lies a long established misconception about the relationship of cities - and indeed of men - with the rest of nature.” Gould critiques the “adaptationist programme” of biology by claiming that it relies on a Panglossian view of nature. Dr. Pangloss, a character that Voltaire created for the explicit purpose of ridiculing his contemporary philosophical competition (Leibnitz), suffers from the misconception that “Things cannot be other than they are … Everything is made for the best purpose.” To sum up the differences between the two critiques in a far too simple manner we could say that Jacobs critiques a worldview that is overwhelming complex and irrational while Gouuld critiques a worldview that is overly totalizing and simplistic. Modern analogues to these critiqued paradigms could be nihilism and intelligent design perhaps.
sha_week6
The idea of emergence [and cities] has always fascinated me, so it was interesting to read Jane Jacobs’ article and have this idea slowly emerge as if we were afraid to ever think about cities in such a way. Even the title refuses normal capitalization. Much of the theory is introduced by narrating and parsing the ideas of Dr. Weaver. The extensive italics that appear show the focus [and in some sense, excitement] of the author on this idea of complex systems, where the Jacobs has deemed it necessary to place even more emphasis — kind, disorganized complexity, organized complexity, organic whole, subtly interconnected ways, etc…It is an odd shift when Jacobs, having lead the reader through Dr. Weaver’s impressive theories and impressing upon the reader how impressive these ideas of organized complexity are, she begins to lead this reader into critiquing current planning practices and the disrespect of cities in general. This notion of disrespect was very interesting, because of the tie in she uses later with nature and sentimentality. Jacobs says there “are dangers in sentimentalizing nature. Most sentimental ideas imply, at bottom, a deep if unacknowledged disrespect…” It reminded me somewhat of taking photographs, something I struggle with in my trips to China. By taking a photograph, you acknowledge to some degree the event or scene’s ability to become an image — the scene dies a little when you agree to that assumption. What Jacobs proposes, then, is a refusal to sentimentalize nature and deny real nature from intruding upon cities; Jacobs suggests that the vital city [along with its own biological descriptions] is capable of being active, not diseased, because of their complexity. This then raises an interesting challenge to planners, and is perhaps why planners have always seen cities as either “disorganized complexity” or “irrational.” Jacobs critiques planners and designers but does not suggest ways to create lively, diverse cities — vital cities. It is implied that vital cities exist, but how can we learn from them? Are planners an obsolete idea?
EMERGENCE
Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities categorizes the progression of problem solving into three distinct stages: problems of simplicity - direct causal relationships between two (or few) variables, problems of disorganized complexity - statistical deductions from a great number of variables operating as a group, and problems of organized complexity - as Dr. Weaver puts it: "Much more important than the mere number of variables is the fact that these variables are all interrelated...[these problems] show the essential feature of organization. Our understanding of each type of problem has been a linear chronology, where realization that the nature of the problem is more complex than previously perceived enables us to approach it from a more accurate standpoint. The article goes on to describe life sciences' realizations about problems of organized complexity that led to countless advances in its field - which neatly segues into the stagnancy of city planning due to designers' inability to recognize the problems of the city as ones of organized complexity.
Although emergence is not mentioned at all in the article, the nature of problems of organized complexity points towards the idea of emergence, which deals with how variables interrelate to form a dissimilar collective. Gould & Lewontin's article uses the refutation of Panglossian paradigm to hint at a system of local optimizations that rely on interdependence of non-critical variables, that is more akin to the behavior of emergence. However, I feel as if emergence's ties of biology exists only because we began to understand biological systems in terms of emergent behavior first, and that intrinsic ties to biological systems might be a misconception. When in fact emergence is an effective system to understand the studies of, as Duncan Watts says: "ecology, epidemiology, to sociology and economics, each of which comes with its own rules and principles that are not reducible to a mere knowledge of psychology and biology." Emergence may well be the best current system for us to understand these fields of study, yet it is entirely possible that the progress of problem solving will reveal emergence's shortcomings.
Although emergence is not mentioned at all in the article, the nature of problems of organized complexity points towards the idea of emergence, which deals with how variables interrelate to form a dissimilar collective. Gould & Lewontin's article uses the refutation of Panglossian paradigm to hint at a system of local optimizations that rely on interdependence of non-critical variables, that is more akin to the behavior of emergence. However, I feel as if emergence's ties of biology exists only because we began to understand biological systems in terms of emergent behavior first, and that intrinsic ties to biological systems might be a misconception. When in fact emergence is an effective system to understand the studies of, as Duncan Watts says: "ecology, epidemiology, to sociology and economics, each of which comes with its own rules and principles that are not reducible to a mere knowledge of psychology and biology." Emergence may well be the best current system for us to understand these fields of study, yet it is entirely possible that the progress of problem solving will reveal emergence's shortcomings.
Emergence
Bin Wang
In the two articles , the authors seem to use natural phenomena as examples or analogies to imply the growth of the cities and means of city planning. I appreciate some points while can not agree some others.
In Jacobs’s writing, she mentioned “the life sciences and cities happen to pose the same kinds of problems does not mean they are the same problems.” However her point that “city planning cannot possibly progress” is compared to the progress of life sciences, which is a different problem. Even city planning cannot progress, it is not because “it lacks the first requisite for a body of practical and progressing thought” but because city planning have to solve more and more problems on the existing cities, which is a big constraint. On contrast, in life sciences, the existing knowledge and materials will help for the next step. What’s more, city planning is a kind of design but not discovery. Just like we cannot say Picasso’s paintings are better then De Vinci’s(that may another problem), but we also cannot say art has no progress at all in the last 500 years. Actually, city planning has progress , at least it seems to me. We have multiple transportation, high rise residents, global networks, which was only in human’s imagination. Of course we have unsuccessful city planning as well, just like those failure in life science experiments.
Analogy sometimes misleads the understanding. As reading the articles I have the sense that the authors are trying to let me recognize cities as natural phenomena, on some extend. To me city planning has a huge difference with the natural phenomena because cities are not nature. The progress of cities are not natural selections. Cities are growing by human’s intention, successful or not. In most cases I feel we are conflicting with natural selections. For example, most city plannings try to preserve the old city fabric which may not match the new life at all. The reason we do it may related to the deepest essence of the meaning of the cities. When we tear the old building down, we kind of feel some human history has been destroyed. The life of human being as a whole is tightly tied with the context and growth of the cities. Cities are the bodies we live in.
In conclusion, I am not very care about the relation between cities and natural phenomena. I don’t think the “emergence” of city is similar with that of nature, science, whatever. City is itself. We maybe cannot tell why blood is red, why elephant is bigger than ants. But we can definite tell what is Baroque , what is modernism; what is Chinese and what is European. And we probably will know what the city will be like in the future because we will design it.
Bin Wang
In the two articles , the authors seem to use natural phenomena as examples or analogies to imply the growth of the cities and means of city planning. I appreciate some points while can not agree some others.
In Jacobs’s writing, she mentioned “the life sciences and cities happen to pose the same kinds of problems does not mean they are the same problems.” However her point that “city planning cannot possibly progress” is compared to the progress of life sciences, which is a different problem. Even city planning cannot progress, it is not because “it lacks the first requisite for a body of practical and progressing thought” but because city planning have to solve more and more problems on the existing cities, which is a big constraint. On contrast, in life sciences, the existing knowledge and materials will help for the next step. What’s more, city planning is a kind of design but not discovery. Just like we cannot say Picasso’s paintings are better then De Vinci’s(that may another problem), but we also cannot say art has no progress at all in the last 500 years. Actually, city planning has progress , at least it seems to me. We have multiple transportation, high rise residents, global networks, which was only in human’s imagination. Of course we have unsuccessful city planning as well, just like those failure in life science experiments.
Analogy sometimes misleads the understanding. As reading the articles I have the sense that the authors are trying to let me recognize cities as natural phenomena, on some extend. To me city planning has a huge difference with the natural phenomena because cities are not nature. The progress of cities are not natural selections. Cities are growing by human’s intention, successful or not. In most cases I feel we are conflicting with natural selections. For example, most city plannings try to preserve the old city fabric which may not match the new life at all. The reason we do it may related to the deepest essence of the meaning of the cities. When we tear the old building down, we kind of feel some human history has been destroyed. The life of human being as a whole is tightly tied with the context and growth of the cities. Cities are the bodies we live in.
In conclusion, I am not very care about the relation between cities and natural phenomena. I don’t think the “emergence” of city is similar with that of nature, science, whatever. City is itself. We maybe cannot tell why blood is red, why elephant is bigger than ants. But we can definite tell what is Baroque , what is modernism; what is Chinese and what is European. And we probably will know what the city will be like in the future because we will design it.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Liwen's post on Emergence
Emergence
Liwen Zhang
The word emergence has strong biological ties that link very successfully to the ways in which we view our cities. Upon looking up the word on dictionary.com, I realize the connotations that emergence has with evolution. In Gould and Lewontin’s critique of adaptationist theories, they very interestingly bring up the issue of architectural constraints that tend to be ignored in discourse upon topics in biology. Gould and Lewontin state that academics tend to rely exclusively on Darwin’s theory of adaptation and evolution alone. This is problematic, firstly because it is a big misinterpretation of what Darwin himself had intended and secondly such negligence could potentially rule out a whole array of new possibilities that could only be unraveled by taking on constraints, such as history and architecture, into account.
Gould and Lewontin’s piece transitions purposefully into Jane Jacob’s reading of the city. Jacobs views the city as a problem of organized complexity, one upon which has to be analyzed as “interrelated into an organice whole” (Jacobs, 433). Jacobs puts into question the current paradigms of urban planning, where the mapping out of statistical master plans leads to a general top down approach to planning. Her descriptions of the way planners think about the cities, the “remote telescopic view”, which de Certeau later proclaims as the “panorama city”, effectively makes the complexities of the cities immediately readable and reduced to mere statistics.
Jacobs’ sophisticated reading and analysis of the city is powerful as she manages to find authority through an anti-expert persona, one upon which she privileges “ordinary people in cities” to have advantage over the experts, in this case, the planners. Perhaps what is most peculiar about this chapter in her book is how she ends it- on an environmentally optimistic note, one upon which she concludes that “big cities and countrysides can get along well together” (Jacobs, 447). Perhaps seeing that a biological theme is prevalent throughout the whole article, Jacobs found the need to tie the piece together with reference to nature. Upon finishing the article, I cannot help but feel that it is very environmentally deterministic. According to Jacobs, the “lively, diverse [and] intense” environments of cities are what will be the solution, per say, to the proposed “problem” as opposed to a “dull, inert” city (Jacobs, 338). This is problematic because Jacobs’ fails to take into account that upon shaping the environment, particular social classes are privileged over others, thus overlooking the socioeconomic conflicts that are inherent within such a “problem”. Thus it may not be a surprise then, when critics conclude that Jacobs’ writings, despite being influential, eventually led to conservative planning.
Emergence
In both the Gould and Jacobs writings, the idea of emergence is not explicitly defined as the subject of the article, rather, natural phenomena serve as case studies for the principles of emergence. In both these articles (neither of which used the word emergence) and the multiple case studies they present, the key to understanding change as a phenomenon is to see it is a complex result of many interrelated variables rather than a simple problem—the essential definition of the word emergence. The Gould article argues this point with multiple examples ranging from the dome of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice to the development of cannibalism. In each situation, whenever a simple (or singular) adaptive strategy is developed, the authors cite the complex myriad of extraneous factors that also contributed to this condition. This is best summed up in the statement, “organisms are integrated entities, not collections of discreet objects.”
Jane Jacobs, in her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, expands the same essential argument as Gould, using, as the chapter’s title “The kind of problem a city is” suggests, the city as an example. Clichés (“slippery as an eel” on page 433) and commonsensical language (“the processes that occur in cities are not arcane…they can be understood by almost anybody” on page 441) are used to draw the reader into a didactic discussion of why cities are misunderstood. Tracing the history of problem solving (as outlined by “Dr. Weaver,” who stands in as surrogate teacher), problems were first understood and analyzed “as problems of simplicity,” or problems where several variables can be analyzed to determine behaviors. I thought this argument was particularly valid for much of modern architecture’s city planning, where I can just imagine practical men such as Ebenezer Howard comparing quantity of housing versus number of jobs as the key principle in this Garden City. Jacobs readily dismisses this (correctly) as naive and instead postures that cities are “complex, organized problems.” This, to me, was Jacobs inadvertently describing emergent systems. Furthermore, she uses the word “behavior” (she even uses italics) as crucial in understanding “complex, organized problems,” or emergence. So phenomena such as vibrant (or dead) streets “emerge” from a complex network of organized behaviors. Although Jacobs, as I have already noted, states the problem can be understood “by almost anyone,” the seemingly infinite number of influences makes understanding the city in this way daunting—a sentiment Jacobs practically tackles with a three-point plan.
Having taken a studio taught by an architect whose practice is named “emergent,” I was particularly intrigued that these two readings gave me a better idea of emergent systems than I got all semester in studio, despite the fact neither of them used the word. Which raises a larger question: how can emergent systems be a design mechanism rather than a design result? The typical design of a large structure (e.g. the Seattle Public Library as outlined by the Metropolis article, “we built this”) involved hundreds of people from different professions with different motivations. In this sense, the resultant design could be characterized as emergent. However, the emergent aspect arises in the process of design development through construction, not in schematic design, where one architect (i.e. Rem Koolhaas) is able to assert authorship. Seemingly, emergence, by its definition, cannot have a singular author and architects who profess this as their design strategy fail to understand the principle in the way Gould and Jacobs describe it.
Jane Jacobs, in her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, expands the same essential argument as Gould, using, as the chapter’s title “The kind of problem a city is” suggests, the city as an example. Clichés (“slippery as an eel” on page 433) and commonsensical language (“the processes that occur in cities are not arcane…they can be understood by almost anybody” on page 441) are used to draw the reader into a didactic discussion of why cities are misunderstood. Tracing the history of problem solving (as outlined by “Dr. Weaver,” who stands in as surrogate teacher), problems were first understood and analyzed “as problems of simplicity,” or problems where several variables can be analyzed to determine behaviors. I thought this argument was particularly valid for much of modern architecture’s city planning, where I can just imagine practical men such as Ebenezer Howard comparing quantity of housing versus number of jobs as the key principle in this Garden City. Jacobs readily dismisses this (correctly) as naive and instead postures that cities are “complex, organized problems.” This, to me, was Jacobs inadvertently describing emergent systems. Furthermore, she uses the word “behavior” (she even uses italics) as crucial in understanding “complex, organized problems,” or emergence. So phenomena such as vibrant (or dead) streets “emerge” from a complex network of organized behaviors. Although Jacobs, as I have already noted, states the problem can be understood “by almost anyone,” the seemingly infinite number of influences makes understanding the city in this way daunting—a sentiment Jacobs practically tackles with a three-point plan.
Having taken a studio taught by an architect whose practice is named “emergent,” I was particularly intrigued that these two readings gave me a better idea of emergent systems than I got all semester in studio, despite the fact neither of them used the word. Which raises a larger question: how can emergent systems be a design mechanism rather than a design result? The typical design of a large structure (e.g. the Seattle Public Library as outlined by the Metropolis article, “we built this”) involved hundreds of people from different professions with different motivations. In this sense, the resultant design could be characterized as emergent. However, the emergent aspect arises in the process of design development through construction, not in schematic design, where one architect (i.e. Rem Koolhaas) is able to assert authorship. Seemingly, emergence, by its definition, cannot have a singular author and architects who profess this as their design strategy fail to understand the principle in the way Gould and Jacobs describe it.
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