81–87 of 87 posts
If it's of any consolation, I too have these "grand" ideas. My obsession for the past ~30 years (I'm 40-something now) has been "how to build the city of the future".
I'm fascinated by that question too. What have you come up with? (Your blog domain listed in your HN profile seems kaput.) Have you heard of Paolo Soleri's "arcology" concept? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
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I'm fascinated by that question too. What have you come up with? (Your blog domain listed in your HN profile seems kaput.) Have you heard of Paolo Soleri's "arcology" concept? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology
Yes, I even visited Arcosanti a few years back!
My dream is something like Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, extended with the content and patterns from Bill Mollison's Permaculture Designers' Manual, and leavened with the arcology concept.
(What about John Todd's "Living Machines" work? You hip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wojrOpH5O7M )
So if you have a big problem that seems difficult to implement, then try to break down that problem and attack each piece from different angle. And once you have enough leverage within the community/user-groups then go after the grand vision.
Prototypes can be as simple as writing a short piece of what one vision could be and then putting it on a blog to get people's comments. It could be creating a storyboard type of comic painting that alternative future. It could be making memes that aim to get people's responses to the idea.
The important part is to just start the conversation and slowly start to uncover all of the messy and complex systemic factors.
And then continue to gather the information, divide it into smaller parts, talk to specialists about the parts that are outside your immediate expertise, and definitely do what others suggested and apply cross-domain thinking to it. The solutions to some challenges already exist in some form in other unrelated domains.
But as long as you can treat what you create as 'disposable' you won't go wrong with a design(make) first approach.
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Yes, I even visited Arcosanti a few years back!
Ah, that's so cool. My dream is something like Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, extended with the content and patterns from Bill Mollison's Permaculture Designers' Manual, and leavened with the arcology concept. (What about John Todd's "Living Machines" work? You hip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wojrOpH5O7M )
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, that's so cool. My dream is something like Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, extended with the content and patterns from Bill Mollison's Permaculture Designers' Manual, and leavened with the arcology concept. (What about John Todd's "Living Machines" work? You hip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wojrOpH5O7M )
I am not familiar with John Todd's work. I will take a look!