Dead Media &The Flavour of Cities The meme is the message

A discussion led by Thomas Purveshttp://opencities.cahttp://thomaspurves.com

Open Cities Conference, Toronto, 2007

Two Modern Spaces

WTF?

WTF?

Mediums behave like memesIn that they propagate by their own rules.Proppaging through

society like waves

Forces of Media:economicsgame theorysnowball effectsinnovationculturechoice-can you name others?-

Catch: Any new media always obsolesces an old

dead media always has some particular flavor, some character that is always lost

Dead flavours are also an opportunity.Retrieval.

Dead flavour

Sometimes we miss old flavours

Sometimes we don’t

The black death as a flavour of medieval cities.

Cars! e.g. Long lasting and unexpected flavours implications

Good

Freedom, mobility, picking up chicks.

Externalities are also flavours

Bad

Ugly

Just Arbitrary

There’s many slightly arbitrary ways to design a streetlight

Debatable

The Region of Awesome

The Zone of the Possible

The Region of Awesome

The Zone of the Possible

Changes in Media reshape the zone of the possible

The Region of Awesome

The Zone of the Possible 1890

Flavour Shift

The Zone of the Possible 2007

Land of Suck

The Region of Awesome

The Zone of the Possible

(great sea of indifference)

FurtherComplications

Flavour loss of the industrial age.

Rising costs of labour

Rising costs of craftmanship

Prefabrication and

standardization bring

advantages at the cost of

flavour

(how much has this

affected our culture’s sense

of aesthetic?)

What flavours will“Open” bring?

Complimentary

3D House PrintingSide effects? Nothing has to be prefab. Organic designs. Changing the shape of the possibility space

Emergence is a flavour of open design

Quality or Crap?

Discussion