[P2P-F] [P2P-URBANISM WA] Re: WECREATE: 1st Neurochemically Primed Innovation Space NYC

[Noel Rivas]

Luckily, those sharks didn't patent the dorsal fins, something that could
have forced the dolphins to "innovate" ;)

El 21/04/2011 14:18, "Michael Mehaffy" <michael.mehaffy at gmail.com> escribió:

Dear All,

There is one other interesting dimension of this discussion.  It is the
question of the balance that human technology strikes (or perhaps often
doesn't strike, often) between innovation and "boring old stuff."  And the
comparison we can make to natural systems, and the differences that result.

There is a perception (especially among many of my architect colleagues)
that what we need is stuff that is "exciting and new," "innovative,"
"thinking outside the box," and so on.  Often this is about creating visual
excitement too, and replacing what has become a neurologically uninteresting
perception with one that triggers more excitement because of its salient
differences.  Advertisers know all about this phenomenon, of course, and
they exploit it rather opportunistically.  But among designers, there is a
sophisticated rationale for the same kind of thing, which amounts to an
argument to get "unstuck," "out of a rut," "able to see successful new
approaches," etc.

Of course, what we often see is that much innovation falls flat.  This is
certainly true in nature.  Self-organization is a messy process with a lot
of bumps and pratfalls -- but it progresses by virtue of a kind of editing
process.  At the heart of this editing process is a simple principle:
 keeping what works!

And what works may be infinitely boring, from the above perspective.
 Ho-hum, how many years have we had to look at all these turtles and
crocodiles?  All these horseshoe crabs, these bacteria?  Nature keeps a lot
of very old stuff around, for a very long time...  (And that;s also an
example of "sustainability...")

Nor does nature ever hesitate to shamelessly copy or reproduce what has
already been done successfully before: the dorsal fins of sharks,
recapitulated by the dolphin 300 million years later,  or the boring old
tubular forms of worms, snakes, eels, or varieties of spirals, whorls, etc
etc... Come on, can't we use our imaginations here?  Why not a swoopy tail
sticking out of a head once in a while, or eyes on the belly for once?
 Let's not be reactionary - let's dare to experiment!

I  am being satirical, but with a serious point: nature does experiment, but
as often as not those are the quick fatalities of evolution.  When something
works, it's kept, or repeated, or only slightly modified -- it's adapted and
transformed.

But what do human designers do?  Very often they try to stick the tails on
the heads, or do other things for purely visual, dramatic effects.  Or they
take one variable, and design just to that variable -- in effect, putting a
propeller on the head of a shark to get energy, forgetting what else might
happen to that propeller over time.  (Hint: it won't turn out well!)  This
is not resilience, and tellingly, it is not the way natural "technology:
works.

I think one of the things we all have to get very clear on very soon, is how
resilient technology, sustainable technology, will have to incorporate the
proven, the old, the boring, even.  And use the exciting and the new only
very, very sparingly!   (To do otherwise is to further clutter up an
increasingly unsustainable culture with disorder, and failing systems...and
that ain't sustainability by any definition!)

Best, m



On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 2:39 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Araceli
>
> I...

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