FutureTechture

Le Corbusier: Plan Voisin in Paris. “Since 1922 (for the past 42 years) I have continued to work, in general and in detail, on the problem of Paris. Everything has been made public. The City Council has never contacted me. It calls me ‘Barbarian’!” (Le Corbusier’s writings, p. 207)

Source: NYU

“Project Cybersyn is an early computer network developed in Chile during the socialist presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–1973) to regulate the growing social property area and manage the transition of Chile’s economy from capitalism to socialism.

Under the guidance of British cybernetician Stafford Beer, often lauded as the ‘father of management cybernetics’, an interdisciplinary Chilean team designed cybernetic models of factories within the nationalized sector and created a network for the rapid transmission of economic data between the government and the factory floor. The article describes the construction of this unorthodox system, examines how its structure reflected the socialist ideology of the Allende government, and documents the contributions of this technology to the Allende administration.”

“The system was most useful in October 1972, when about 50,000 striking truck drivers blocked the access streets that converged towards Santiago. Using the system’s telex machines, the government was able to guarantee the transport of food into the city with only about 200 trucks driven by strike-breakers.

After the military coup on September 11, 1973, the control centre was destroyed. (wiki)

Eden writes that Project Cybersyn eventually consisted of four sub-projects: Cybernet, Cyberstride, Checo and Opsroom.

* Cybernet: This component “expanded the existing telex network to include every firm in nationalized sector, thereby helping to create a national network of communication throughout Chile’s three-thousand-mile-long territory. Cybersyn team members occasionally used the promise of free telex installation to cajole factory managers into lending their support to the project. Stafford Beer’s early reports describe the system as a tool for real-time economic control, but in actuality each firm could only transmit data once per day.”

* Cyberstride: This component “encompassed the suite of computer programmes written to collect, process, and distribute data to and from each of the state enterprises. Members of the Cyberstride team created ‘ quantitative flow charts of activities within each enterprise that would highlight all important activities ’, including a parameter for ‘ social unease ’[...]. The software used statistical methods to detect production trends based on historical data, theoretically allowing [headquarters] to prevent problems before they began. If a particular variable fell outside of the range specified by Cyberstride, the system emitted a warning [...]. Only the interventor from the affected enterprise would receive the algedonic warning initially and would have the freedom, within a given time frame, to deal with the problem as he saw fit. However, if the enterprise failed to correct the irregularity within this timeframe, members of the Cyberstride team alerted the next level management [...].”

* CHECO: This stood for CHilean ECOnomy, a component of Cybersyn which “constituted an ambitious effort to model the Chilean economy and provide simulations of future economic behaviour. Appropriately, it was sometimes referred to as ‘Futuro’. The simulator would serve as the ‘government’s experimental laboratory ’ – an instrumental equivalent to Allende’s frequent likening of Chile to a ‘social laboratory’. [...] The simulation programme used the DYNAMO compiler developed by MIT Professor Jay Forrester [...]. The CHECO team initially used national statistics to test the accuracy of the simulation program. When these results failed, Beer and his fellow team members faulted the time differential in the generation of statistical inputs, an observation that re-emphasized the perceived necessity for real-time data.

* Opsroom: The fourth component “created a new environment for decision making, one modeled after a British WWII war room. It consisted of seven chairs arranged in an inward facing circle flanked by a series of projection screens, each displaying the data collected from the nationalized enterprises. In the Opsroom, all industries were homogenized by a uniform system of iconic representation, meant to facilitate the maximum extraction of information by an individual with a minimal amount of scientific training. [...] Although [the Opsroom] never became operational, it quickly captured the imagination of all who viewed it, including members of the military, and became the symbolic heart of the project.

Sources:
Cybersyn, Chilie

Read more: Wikipedia: Project Cybersyn

Even more: The Guardian

Image Source: Grancomo

Tagged: chilie

Physicist and former Sante Fe Institute president Geoffrey West practically stole the show with his talk on urban metabolisms. Cities are like organisms, he explained, except they grow much faster and much bigger than anything living – in fact, there appears to be no upper limit to their size or propensity for innovation… or disaster. “Urbanization is the problem,” he said, “and it can also be the solution.”

These being Silicon Valley types, it was clear what that solution should be. “Copying 20th century cities in Dubai and Shanghai is crazy,” said former Sony chairman Nobuyuki Idei in yet another session. “We need… a city OS” – a single platform managing power, water, traffic, security and any other urban system you can think of.

Via: Fast Company

When I was little I obsessed over the article about the Statue of Liberty in the 1960 World Book Encyclopedia that my parents kept on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf. It was this picture in particular that I stared at the most.

I’m much more interested in the beginnings of things than of the finished products. How things get organized and created intrigues me.

These pictures were taken by Albert Fernique and are now in the collection of the New York Public Library.

This vision of a future London comes to us courtesy of the Grey’s Cigarette Company. It’s pretty impressive for an advert. You’ve got your giant skyscrapers, city-spanning domes, sky bridges, and even advertising with phonetic spelling.

And note the transportation system with all manner of monorails and trams. Sure, going north or south is a breeze, but cross town takes you the better part of a day.

See more at davidszondy.com/future/city/greys.htm

In 1970, Renato Severino said that future spaces needed flexibility, continuity and articulation, and digital spaces are just that. They are flexible in meaning, continuously carrying inhabitants/users from one region to another, and articulate themselves trough others and their environments.

The digital space is a space of modular coordination. This type of space has been an obsession by a number of architectural theorists, namely in the 60’s to 70’s. Architects during this time period used modular terms to describe the idea of a perfect space, one that was able to contort and conform to new situations.

The determining characteristics of Equipotential space are continuity, flexibility, and articulation. Instead of being planned for a few specific purposes, Equipotential space can be modulated at will for any purpose.

“In developing a new approach to deal with the problems described, we must clearly articulate a concept and begin applying and refining it on the level if the mass society,

The online space is the most flexible form of space because it may be rewritten. It may be divided according to how one divides things in an auditorium. A shape of space characterized by its capability to be used for one of the largest variety of needs. This permutational quality in the off-line area holds only a fraction of the ability compared to an online space’s capability to be repurposed. An efficient space has a theme or purpose. The rest is left empty.

Friendfeed gathers content feeds and social stream from different services and formats them in a consumable fashion. A non-fluid space is status, and solid, and it cannot be easily changed or spread by the user.
Equipotential space offers the possibility of real freedom. This is not freedom just to be different, but freedom to participate as fully as possible, give social, economic and technical reality” (29).

The most successful online sites have shown us a full realization of Severino’s Equipotential Space. “It is freedom to shape responsive solutions to immediate needs – and when these needs change, to have a new solution” (29).
“The relative availability of options is a measure of the control humans can exercise over their environment and therefore a measure of their relative freedom”.

The online space is the most flexible form of space because it may be rewritten. It may be divided according to how one divides things in an auditorium. A shape of space characterized by its capability to be used for one of the largest variety of needs. This permutational quality in the off-line area holds only a fraction of the ability compared to an online space’s capability to be repurposed. An efficient space has a theme or purpose. The rest is left empty.

Friendfeed gathers content feeds and social stream from different services and formats them in a consumable fashion. A non-fluid space is status, and solid, and it cannot be easily changed or spread by the user.
Equipotential space offers the possibility of real freedom. This is not freedom just to be different, but freedom to participate as fully as possible, give social, economic and technical reality” (29).

The most successful online sites have shown us a full realization of Severino’s Equipotential Space. “It is freedom to shape responsive solutions to immediate needs – and when these needs change, to have a new solution” (29).
“The relative availability of options is a measure of the control humans can exercise over their environment and therefore a measure of their relative freedom”.

This concept is Equipotential space. Special formulations in current usage proceed from a definition of space as a value and ate concerned with its geometrical characteristics.
Instead, the definition could be extended to cover changing patterns of relationships. The matrix in which these relationships exist can be called Equipotential space (27).
“the determining characteristics of Equipotential space are continuity, flexibility and articulation. Instead of space (?) planned for a few specific purposes, Equipotential space can be modulated at for any purpose” (27).

I found that constructions of architectural space during this era (1970) from several authors attempt to create modular futuristic spaces as they conceive of technological effects of space.

Some of these spaces began to resemble spaceships, or pods –> interlocking places suited for either one number it occupants or many.

The issue here is that the future architectural spaces are not analog spaces.
But are digital ones, and it us these digital spaces that are modular and resemble spaceships, protecting us from the liminality and harshness of outer space that is the Internet, vast interconnected architectures are only accessible by technosocial hybrids; and the architecture of rude interfaces us not being structured by traditional architecture any longer — buy rather programmers, interaction designers, software architects, salespeople —> even those who inhabit this space.

In this way, Twitter functions as a Equipotential space, in that it can be modulated at will for any purpose (often more powerfully or far-reaching than that of analog space) because it has empty containers, restraints (places for meaning, hyper-textual capabilities, and broadcasting capabilities).

“A Japanese camera or a German car”, Serverino writes, “can function all over the world, regardless of local social, political or economic conditions. The same airplanes regularly serve all countries. Penicillin is equally useful for combating infections in India, Africa, and China, as well as in Europe”.
“In these instances, a certain task has to be preformed, a certain standard or result has been expected, and techniques and equipment have been developed to provide widely acceptable responses”.
“These responses are products of technology. They begin with the assumption that all peoples of the world share sameness, regardless of any local or historical factors” (27).
If, in 1970, Severino said that future spaces needed flexibility, continuity and articulation, digital spaces are just that. They are flexible in meaning, continuously carrying inhabitants/users from one region to another, and articulate themselves trough others and their environments.

Renato Severino used the term “Frame Units” and “Function Units” to describe activity volume and functional capabilities of architectural forms.
Twitter is composed of frame units and function units, the function being the buttons pressed, and the frame units bring what constrains the data to predictable flows and familiar structures.
“When the activity value is defined by the frame components and the basic supplying functions are supplied by function objects, the flexibility inherent in Equipotential Space is achieved” (27).

Twitter works well because Function Objects and Frame Components are in balance, but what occurs when The Function Objects outweigh Frame Components?

In 2007, users began to see a glut of applications available to them on Facebook. These apps begin increasingly flooding their ability to interact with the interface, because they buried all real communication with repeated requests for user attention. This crisis lasted for some time before Facebook compressed the requests and hid then behind a dialog box).

When too many apps on Facebook entered the ecosphere/ecosystem, the Frame Components became strained because they had not been structured to withstand such force. In order to keep the system from collapsing under an almost cancerous bloat of Function Objects, the Frame Components had to be restructured.
In short, the architecture of the system had to be altered.

The Facebook team rebalanced the ratio of Function Objects to Frame Components by compressing like actions into like categories. thus, many Function Objects were grouped into few, and thus became manageable once more. Facebook’s ratio of Frame Components (it’s system architectural boundaries) and it’s Function Objects was once again restored.

Let’s look at the converse case. What happens when Frame Components outweigh Function Objects? In the case of traditional networks, too many Frame Components can take the shape of heavy information architectures. This results in systems with excessive clicks to get to data, or information buried behind many walls, compartmentalized and difficult to understand.

This is also the case web systems built entirely on empty social networking systems occur. A user enters a system, and after setting up a lathe string of social input (realized that there is no data to “act on”; nothing go do in the system. These systems usually fail because of this. (example? any network with no content. Aimless sharing).

What are some examples of systems that have excellent Function Object to Frame Component ratios? Flickr is one. It allows simple user upload, Streamlined Function Objects, and an extremely lightweight set of Frame Components. This allows the user data in the system to have extreme prominence, and that user data has clearly defined by very transparent boundaries between it —> relations are clearly defined (tags, categories, sets, groups, descriptions, titles, copyrights, owners, contributors) ate all clearly defined and clickable. Metadata is easily added to, and tags are easily created.

The frame components in Flickr *are* the function objects.

From this, we can surmise that, in an architectural system, the delineation between frame components and function objects has an impact on the usability and transparency of that system.

The only major difference among these function objects is their scale to the number of people which will use each simultaneously.

Basically, there are two scales: those where functions re performed by no more than two r three people at the same time, and those in which many more people must be provided for” (28). On Flickr, here are function objects specifically intended for the use by many people and those intended for use by only a few. Additionally , spaces (frame components) are created by permission boundaries for friends and family, as well as “only viewable by me or the public.

These delineation of volume change the number of function objects and the scale and interchange rules of frame components.
“Compactness, an intrinsic characteristic of function objects, facilitates mobility and efficiency” (28).
Set Theory of Spaces
The set of all things subset category image individual comments as a subset of an imge. Profile as a subset of comments, images as a subset of profiles.

In Equipotential Space, this sort of freedom can be available form the personal and familial levels all the way through to the sociopolitical level political elections and Twitter.


”All though the flexibility in shaping the Space and controlling the environment” (29).

Severino proposes a real-life experiment similar to the one we might see used in companies today to determine analytic use of internal company resources. A sort of test to understanding the efficiencies are around then be interesting to take anexistinterstin to hypothesize the same events occupying the same time spans and relationships in Equipotential space and calculate the total value required as a percentage of present supposed needs.


”As an exercise,” he writes, “it would be interesting to take an existing unit, such as a large urban university, that included almosy all types of social activities on all varieties of scale, and conducted a use-study of all the separate inflexibly defined space no existing, to find out what percentage of the time each space was being used.

Even with a finite, limited number of components within each subsystem, Equipotential Space can provide almost any variety of relationships (for example, space) requited a any time” 29-30).

In the online perspective this would be equivalent to testing the space to determine wasted Function of Objects and Frame Components.

If only we applied this process to our lived spaces now. We can, with the use of stop motion/time lapse and cameras, or the ethnographic queries of a seasoned anthropologist. But we can most easily do this on websites, as. And truly, any company who is not doing this is missing out on the opportunity to understand which parts of their virtual architectures are useless to their users.

Frame Components and Function Objects

“Equipotential Space develops a time dimension by relating objects in a volume over a period of time as needs change” (301).

In this way, digital spaces also morph in volume over time. Time creates space, and volume is created by use. Time can also streamline space.

Source book is Equipotential Space-Freedom in Architecture Severino, Renato [1]
From: Equipotential Space: Freedom in Architecture Praeger publishers. 14. Serverino, New York, London.

Tagged: architecture design, modular coordination, space

Le Corbusier expected the masses to live in these giant concrete hives in flats stripped bare of any ornaments or colour and when they finally manage to escape from their warrens they have nothing to look forward to except empty spaces between the buildings and the the most dangerous aerodrome in history slapped smack in the middle of the mall just to confuse people and keep the neighbours awake.

Source: davidszondy.com/future/city/corbusier.htm

Tagged: Le Corbusier

Hugh Ferris was an architect who did much to promote the city of the future as a collection of immense skyscrapers–only in this case it was in cities unlit by anything except gigantic ground-level arc lamps.

Batman would feel very much at home here.

Source: davidszondy.com/future/city/ferris.htm

Tagged: hugh ferris

I’ve always had an obsession with how people in the past thought the future would look like. When I was little, I had a tabletop book called the “History of the Future”. The book cannot be found anymore online. It is out of print. It was mostly in French.

Because of this, I have decided to make my own version of that book – a digital book about the History of the future. That is why this site has been created, and this is what this site will be about.

Please submit an image or two if you find anything particularly interesting. A simple link will do in the comments below.