September 7, 2017
Increased anxiety is only one dimension of how we experience change. Another dimension is a constant sense of crisis (which has, incidentally, always prevailed in history)... A third dimension is a constant feeling of chaos held at bay (another constant in history), just beyond the firewall of everyday routine (the Field is everyday routine). (Venkatesh Rao, "Welcome to the Future Nauseous")
- To swallow the Venkat Rao red pill and understand why architectural thinking is fraught in the 21st century
- To unpack Keller Easterling's cybernetic epistemology and understand her implicit response to Subcritical Disease
- What does VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) mean for architecture?
- Is computing as a universal metaphor a threat to architecture?
- What is Subcritical Disease and how does Keller attempt to bypass it?
This week we will begin to build out our "speculative discursive field" by collectively creating:
- glossary of concepts
- mind map of the idea spaces of different authors
- bibliography of related texts
- list of valuable quotes
- object list of case studies
- Rao, Venkatesh, "Breaking Smart":
- https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/a-new-soft-technology/
- https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/purists-versus-pragmatists/
- https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/agility-and-illegibility/
- https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/prometheans-and-pastoralists/
- https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/tinkering-versus-goals/
- https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/the-zemblanity-of-containers/
- https://breakingsmart.com/en/season-1/the-serendipity-of-streams/
- Rao, Venkatesh, Ribbonfarm:
- Stewart Brand, "Spacewar", Rolling Stone, December 7, 1972
- Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft, chapter 2
- Srinivasan, Balaji, "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit", 2013
- Florin, Fabrice, "Hackers: Wizards of the Electronic Age", 1984