email » henry@interactivelabs.co.uk
Holistic Empathy
Systems Thinking, Physical Interaction
MA project
2006/2007 (in progress)
I'm interested in understanding complex systems, and enjoying them for what they are. I think that i'm trying to turn the london underground into a massive supercomputer - but i'm not sure what that means, and it might already be one....
Design is often called upon to make things simpler... but should all complex systems be simplified? As the world fills with evermore complex systems, is it right to shroud everything in a neat façade of simplicity? Perhaps people can be conscious of systems at different levels.
Monitoring might work in the same way that one monitors the various status indicators of a group of pets or plants in a garden.
A geek might have multiple monitors of various information streams, telling him (or her) the status of a number of complex systems that have influence. These information streams, and the context they reside in give the geek a different world outlook than a normal person. A train-spotter has a relationship with the complexity of a mass transit system that is hidden to most people, but valuable to the train-spotter. It was data generated by aircraft spotters that revealed that the CIA transports terror suspects around the world, using 'our' airports.
