Programming (the UN etc)

Ok, so the last few days have been considering program. To cut to the chase:

I had a brainstorming session (with AB) about program. I came up with 5 or 6 interesting ones. The big caveats were:
- "You are using the UN etc. to make arguments about architecture and agency, not about world peace and the like."
- "I should be able to distill program (that is interesting/important to me) from these, the arguments themselves are not the only things that matter (ie program is more important than argument/scenario)

Images of the blackboard (being as transparent and candid as possible here):


Based on this, I thought about 6 programs for a while. So far, the UN is the only one that has really gone anywhere fast. So in the spirit of ruthlessness and expediency, here is a slideshow ruminating on the UN as program, and Hong Kong and New York as sites. Its sort of all over the map and and loosely structured, but its doing something.

PLUS, ITS EXCITING! I am actually very into all this, and it dovetails really well with all my previous research. So, ruminations on other programs will proceed and summaries will be forthcoming, but for now,

HERE ARE SOME THOUGHTS ON THE UN AS OFFERING A THESIS (Including Proposal-ly things)

Google Urbanism 1.0 - Proposition

So, the last few days have not been particularly productive on the speculation side; ruminating on Peabody Intervention has not produced much by way of fruitful architectural thought. As far as researching goes, I have had many more thoughts and frustrations and revelations, but I am still convinced (as was discussed last Friday) that some immediate, rapid, productive speculation is in order. Otherwise a downward spiral will begin shortly, and this will want to turn into a (bad) research paper. So, though I should have initiated this yesterday, I am now proposing an exercise in speculation. The bulk of it will be done before the weekend, and it will be analyzed and formatted over the weekend. The point is to make a proposal (which I am totally not sure of) and begin outlining an attack to it, which will hopefully allow me to bring in and frame the myriad of disparate thoughts and strands and blah blah blah.

In the spirit of the Daily Radical Proposal (yesterday's and today's of which this will count for),
I present:

GOOGLE URBANISM 1.0


THE SCENARIO

The 700 MHz broadcast TV spectrum goes up for grabs early next year (Jan?). This is true.

What this means: the portion of the spectrum (2-51?) that was formerly reserved for the broadcast of analog television signals is available as TV stations were forced (asked?) to switch over to digital broadcasting by a certain date (2009?).

Google submitted a letter to the FCC stating that if 4 conditions of "openness" were imposed on the winner of the auction, they would submit a minimum open bid of 4.6 billion $ (what is this relative to current market value). More on this later, but it is basically a 'classical' economic response to a 'duopoly' that is being proposed, with all the attendant baggage. Plus Google wants in, obviously.

Perhaps a combo of cheap devices and free service based on an ad-centric model akin to that of their search engine is in store for nation-wide free wireless access, through any device, but especially a Google phone.

The other companies, cable TV and phones are pissed, AT&T the least (because they don't own the last mile to your home).


Good/Cool Things:

- It sounds so spatially evocative (think hydropower a little):

"At issue is a swath of spectrum in the 700 megahertz band"

"breaks up the 700 megahertz band into a five blocks of spectrum and requires the owners of a large, 22-MHz upper "C Block" to provide a platform that is more open to devices and applications."

"The FCC will soon auction off access to that spectrum, which is considered highly valuable because of its far-reaching strengths."
"leveled the playing field for companies that want to get into the network business but cannot break through the defenses erected by the massive incumbents who dominate the industry,"

- It's about networks

- Google is intense

- the internet, wireless communications, airwaves and the attendant metaphors are interesting: software v hardware, hacking, open source, open source community, docs, earth etc, massive multiplayer online universes, crazy networked physical infrastructure vs wireless infrastructure with mobile devices

- there is plenty of intense physical stuff to deal with

- Google has issues with censoring in China, is beginning to deal with global geographic issues

- maybe there is a wacky crossover between spectrums, comm waves and physical pollution as different emanations of the same stuff

- the whole ideas of communities (chat, email group, site, social progs, multiplayer lives and games) and forms of web-bing (blog, email, browsing, apps, storage, sharing, and so on) would seem exciting and spatial and you know

- s.o.e. is allover this

- this list goes on, and could get organized, but it all leads to


THE PROPOSITION

hmmm...its coming.

Today's Radical Proposal

Today's Radical Proposal (after digesting the revelatory introduction of de Certeau's "The Practice of Everyday Life" (which I am only beginning, for now, to scan, appropriate and assimilate (good words)), which also happens to further frame Peabody Intervention as an observation test case: The thesis prep document becomes a tactical manual for resistance for the Allston community in the face of Harvard's expansion, a tactical assemblage for "renting" and therefore exerting political control over its geographic (maybe no longer legally...) space, and The Thesis becomes either the exercising of these tactics in a war-game mock scenario to create seeds/holdouts, or better (maybe) the provision of the infrastructure for such operations to utilize ("a body of constraints stimulating new discoveries, a set of rules with which improvisation plays") as a complement to the manual, or maybe better even the deployment of a parasitic architecture that leeches off the existing architecture/infrastructure to improve the conditions to nourish such new modes of consumption.

Mobile Sweatshop

Just to agitate before bed:

Why would it be controversial for, say, Nike to set up a fleet of mobile sweat shops that can capitalize on the needs of the global refugee crisis, and either
(1) act as a basis for a new society (think of the ads!)
(2) withdraw and relocate under threat

Headline: Nike Pod 4C Workforce lands in Lebanon