garethace

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  • in reply to: Welcome to Ireland’s ugly urban sprawl #748848
    garethace
    Participant

    Listened to a conversation between two non-exercising young males recently. One of them admitted to the other, that he would consider doing some swimming as exercise, if they ever invented Ipods for under water.

    I never realised the task of medical and health officials in this country is so difficult, when that is what you are up against. I was wondering does anyone have links to current stats? How fat has this country really become during the good times?

    On another note, I notice for the first time in about fifteen years the ‘scare campaigns’ in student lavatories has changed from the usual ‘don’t pick up aids’ message, to ‘drinking is bad’ message. I don’t quite know how to respond to this except to say, I must be getting old, having outlived a whole ‘fatal illness’ ad campaign.

    So what will really get us first? Global warming, AIDs, obesity or alcohol? For further reference, do check out writing like that of Naomi Klein and John Thackara, to understand the background to a lot of these health and well being campaigns.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Dublin skyline #747947
    garethace
    Participant

    One of the first people to change the skyline in Dublin, Sam Stephenson.

    https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=5606

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Car Free City #778096
    garethace
    Participant

    Ambitious looking plans happening today in China.

    http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2006/08/the_work_of_von.html

    B.

    in reply to: Car Free City #778095
    garethace
    Participant

    I for one, welcome a broadening of the focus of discussion at the planning forum. So just to celebrate this change of emphasis, I would like to point some folks to a useful looking book on the shelves at the present. It is called, ‘The Inconvient Truth’, by Al Gore.

    Like the saying that goes, a picture tells a thousand words, the pictures in Al Gore’s book try to describe a very large story indeed – that of global warming. I just mention the book, not so much for Archiseek posters at all – because I know you guys can source whatever images you may need quite easily. But perhaps for other folks who aren’t as web enabled, for a reasonable price of 20 euro, the Al Gore book packs a great deal between the covers. Commentaries are kept very minimal too, and the font and layout is attractive and easy on the eye. The book really looks at the bigger picture I think, of what cars and mobility on today’s scale is doing to polar regions and glaciers, in places most of us will never even set foot, or even hear of.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    P.S. I warn you though people, ‘The Inconvenient Truth’, is an apt title to this book. After leafing through it for a few minutes myself, I was very deeply shocked by the pictures I saw. It sort of removes that comfortable distance, we all feel, between the environment we live and drive cars in, and the environments far away, that we are affecting.

    in reply to: Is the High Street redundant #765688
    garethace
    Participant

    Tim O’Reilly scared by possibilities of new Google Technology

    I guess, that online shopping for music is going to get more powerful if this new Google technology takes off. It will allow the PC to listen to your background music as you browse the internet using google search, to find out what music you like – altering the ‘search results’ to find music, that google feels you will appreciate. Scary, scary, weird kind of Men in Black areas we are getting into here folks.

    I was watching a documentary this morning on sky television, about a british equivalent to roswell. At the end of the documentary, a few serious british military people stated their concerns about America, having got most of its technology by talking with aliens. That America’s advancement in technology has been arranged by Men in Black. I supposed, in the ‘open society’ of the philosopher Karl Popper, each theory is possible until it is proven flawed. Therefore, even wild theories could be true until proven otherwise. It is still -not- possible to prove, that America didn’t learn it’s technology from an alien, or aliens. Who know?

    I really do wonder about this new technology from google, where the pc is able to enter into your home and request all kinds of weird information about you.

    http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/06/big_brother_is_listening.html

    Tim O’Reilly, the well known promoter of web technology is really shaken by this, it appears.

    Brian O’ Hanlon

    in reply to: Is the High Street redundant #765685
    garethace
    Participant

    Good New York Times piece about the book industry going digital here:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/books/05digi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin

    garethace
    Participant

    In the last year or two the trend has been to remove the scent of people, so as to come as close as possible to simulating the appearance of content emerging out of the Web as if it were speaking to us as a supernatural oracle. This is where the use of the Internet crosses the line into delusion.

    good essay by virtual reality pioneer jaron lanier, at edge.org.

    http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge183.html

    Lanier has this to say about collective authorship movements such as wikipedia.

    These movements are at their most efficient while building hidden information plumbing layers, such as Web servers. They are hopeless when it comes to producing fine user interfaces or user experiences. If the code that ran the Wikipedia user interface were as open as the contents of the entries, it would churn itself into impenetrable muck almost immediately. The collective is good at solving problems which demand results that can be evaluated by uncontroversial performance parameters, but bad when taste and judgment matter.

    This point, could be made about the interaction of the planning process, the hive mind, and the architect, the individual.

    The pre-Internet world provides some great examples of how personality-based quality control can improve collective intelligence. For instance, an independent press provides tasty news about politicians by reporters with strong voices and reputations, like the Watergate reporting of Woodward and Bernstein. Other writers provide product reviews, such as Walt Mossberg in The Wall Street Journal and David Pogue in The New York Times. Such journalists inform the collective’s determination of election results and pricing. Without an independent press, composed of heroic voices, the collective becomes stupid and unreliable, as has been demonstrated in many historical instances. (Recent events in America have reflected the weakening of the press, in my opinion.)

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Luas extension B1 Line #775851
    garethace
    Participant

    There seems to be a bit of news in the media at the moment, about rising property values along LUAS lines. According to our newspaper media at least, it seems to be a simple cause and effect relationship. Wherever the line goes, the land values will rise accordingly. Prices rises from 300,000 to 1 million not being uncommon.

    I just find it interesting, from a train operators point of view – to make the line profitable, they are often forced to come up with some innovative solutions. Here is a quote from a recent Nicholas G. Carr article at Business and Strategy web site. Expect, this sort of venture to become commonplace in Dublin in the near future. Things like Dublin Zoo, out of fashion for a long number of years, might find a way to re-invent themselves and prove popular again as destinations for off-peak commuters on the LUAS rail lines. It is not all about rising land values, and residential price hikes. That is the point that newspaper media seems to miss, at the moment.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    the operators of streetcar systems in U.S. cities were struggling with a different challenge: earning a decent return on their capital-intensive rail networks. Although many people traveled on the lines during weekday rush hours, commuting back and forth to work, few rode them at other times. The imbalance in demand undermined the profitability of the operators. They had to build their systems to accommodate the peaks in usage, but most of the time their expensive systems generated little revenue.

    Realizing that they needed to boost ridership during nonpeak hours, the streetcar operators hit on a brilliant idea: Build amusement parks outside city centers. In the summer of 1897, for example, Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Street Railway opened Norumbega Park, complete with a zoo, a theater, and a carousel, at the end of its line in the suburb of Newton. By 1901, according to historian David Nye, more than half of the country’s urban transit companies had opened such “trolley parks” — and they proved a great complement to streetcar service. They not only increased the lines’ passenger load during nights and weekends, but they enabled the companies to operate much more efficiently. Since at the time transit companies owned the electricity generators that powered their trains, they were able to significantly increase the capacity utilization of those power plants, making their businesses much more capital-efficient. And a side benefit would later emerge: The technological innovations required to build safe roller-coasters and other rides could be used to improve the rail lines themselves.

    http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/06202?pg=0

    in reply to: Something for the Style Police here at Archiseek? #777944
    garethace
    Participant

    Another technology Archiseek might merge with, in the future perhaps?
    Video surveillance feeds going online to prevent style crimes?
    Well, to be honest considering how much building has happened so quickly here in Ireland, the borders are quite long to patrol.
    Maybe Smart Mobs, to borrow a phrase from the writer Howard Rheingold, do present a viable alternative.

    http://www.smartmobs.com/

    Shoreditch broadband project in the UK, was an ambitious public funded project to deliver the internet to a large community.
    Breaching the digital divide:
    http://www.ippr.org.uk/articles/?id=508&tID=95&pID=508

    One of the applications they have found it seems, is online surveillance.
    De-centralised surveillance:
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/30/shoreditch_digital_bridge/

    This enticing vision of the electronic neighbourhood watch is offered by the Shoreditch Trust as a part of its Shoreditch Digital Bridge (SDB) project, which aims to build a broadband digital network covering 20,000 residents on housing estates in the Shoreditch area.

    Shoreditch TV web site:
    http://www.digitalbridge.org.uk/

    The Houston Chronicle has more on patrolling borders here:
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3921778.html

    The Internet as a medium naturally lends itself to this kind of online collaboration.
    In a way, that older forms of media, such as TV do not.
    Indeed, the radio, in the form of the ‘Joe Duffy’ show offers better chances for collaboration and discussion than TV does.
    I have written one or two articles for paper magazines, but even that is problematic.
    There is always an advertiser or someone, who wants your space – so you get shoved to one side.
    Channel 4 and all the other big interests, in the older forms of media, are busy trying to respond to the threat posed by the new media of the Internet.
    RTE even jumped on the bandwagon, of trying to retro-fit the ancient technology of television, with a collaborative angle, or interactive capability.
    With Celebrity Farm, people could vote having watched the ‘live video surveillance footage’, and decide who stays in the house or not.
    But, as was revealed with Celebrity Farm, the few hours of ‘live’ footage the public were treated to, were heavily staged affairs – not the real thing.
    What the Chinesse mob hunting story shows, is the size of the publics appetite for something like the real chase, the ‘real’ big brother so to speak.
    It becomes a re-interpretation of the older formats, like the TV game show, spin the wheel etc, etc.
    An inversion of the idea, of everyday people, chosen by lottery ticket, to ‘spin the wheel’.
    It seems that the public want more nowadays, than the older TV media can provide.
    They wish to partake in some kind of a group hunting adventure.
    Which goes back to a very ancient instinct, that of survival perhaps.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Homo Sapiens, History and Tool Making. #777883
    garethace
    Participant

    I think, with all of this noise currently about the Irish roll-out of a broadband communications infra-structure, it has deflected discussion away from more important issues. It is not just about the roll out of the infrastructure per se, but also about the laws, statutory bodies and regulations which surround it. It might be instructive to know, that countries like South Korea have a high adoption of broadband because of very loose regulation concerning what can be transmitted over the wire, or through the airwaves. In other words, certain nations are acquiring TV, radio, news and everything through a computer and broadband connection.

    In the 1995 book, ’Being Digital’, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT media labs points out, that the US, law doesn’t even permit the dual ownership of a TV/radio broadcasting station and a newspaper. These are issues that Ireland has grappled with too, in the newspaper print industry. Monopolies being created, deciding what is, or is not broadcast. We are moving from an atom-based, to a bit-based culture, and there are issues we will encounter. Issues which will be crucial in future projects like Digital Hub or whatever else the future holds.

    Take the weather as an example. Instead of broadcasting the weatherman and his proverbial maps and charts, thinking of sending a computer model of the weather. These bits arrive in your computer-TV and then you, at the receiving end, implicitly or explicitly use local computing intelligence to transform them into a voice report, a printed map, or an animated cartoon with your favourite Disney character. The smart TV set will do this in whatever way you want, maybe even depending on your disposition and mood at the moment. In this example, the broadcaster does not even know what the bits will turn into: video, audio, or print. You decide that. The bits leave the station as bits to be used and transformed in a variety of different ways, personalised by a variety of different computer programs, and archived or not as you see fit.

    That scenario truly is one of bit casting and data casting and beyond the kind of regulatory control we have today, which assumes the transmitter knows that a signal is TV, radio, or data.

    Some background knowledge about HDTV and FCC will be needed to understand the following, but I will just include it for completion sake.

    Many readers may have assumed that my mention of Bit Police was synonymous with content censorship. Not so. The consumer will censor by telling the receiver what bits to select. The Bit Police, out of habit, will want to control the medium itself, which really makes no sense at all. The problem, strictly political, is that the proposed HDTV allocation looks like a handout. While the FCC had no intention of creating a windfall, special interest groups will raise hell because the bandwidth rich are getting bandwidth richer.

    The following short paragraph I think, relates particularly well to the new Irish upcoming multi-media and digital industries.

    Should it really be unlawful to own a newspaper bit and a television bit in the same place? What if the newspaper bit is an elaboration on the TV bit in a complex, personalised multimedia information systems. The consumer stands to benefit from having the bits commingle and the reporting be at various levels of depth and display quality. If current cross-ownership policies remain in existence, isn’t the American citizen being deprived of the richest possible information environment? We are shortchanging ourselves grotesquely if we forbid certain bits to commingle with others.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Biomedical Clusters #777782
    garethace
    Participant

    Software is becoming a part of most folks lives these days. Whether it be a home owner, using personal finance applications, a kid using Encarta, a motorist using Autoroute, a small business using word processing, or a multi-national installing SAP. The hardware platform could be almost anything – laptop, web based, mainframe etc, etc. There are navigational applications for mobile phones nowadays. Just imagine public libraries, which were amongst the first to use information technology and networks to un-complicate the administration of lending books. Certainly, with cash dispensers, library information systems were the first real computers systems I interacted with as a younger man.

    The packaged software industry is still almost exclusively a United States preserve. The Irish government recently subscribed to J.D. Edwards E-Government software – which is all more dollars flowing back across the Atlantic. Few other countries, except Germany, has managed to produce a top 100, much less a top ten company. Ireland has software companies, but most of them, and those in India do out-sourcing work for the US companies. The issue of health care, and its efficiency should be a major driving problem, for the software programming talent in this country. I seriously don’t think we should buy in another boxed solution from the USA. We shouldn’t squander opportunities and money trying to automated voting systems etc, etc.

    One of the main reasons why privatisation of health care provides such an opportunity for wealthy capitalists to move in, is the public service, has dragged its feet for too long with inefficient and out moded concepts of operation. In an era of globalisation – we have these tiny health boards, who are unable to benefit from the sharing of information and intellectual resources. The opportunity to move information and expertise around faster – is just waiting to be taken advantage of. It couldn’t be better for an investor, to leap in now and become established. We all know about the construction boom happening in the cities and towns at the moment. That is great. But where we are falling behind badly, is in software. Which like the physical environment, requires architects, engineers, planners and visionaires just the same. Now that we have the wealth and talent, I ask the government to support a native Irish software and technology industry.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    In the United States, for example, the financial services industry has been an early and heavy investor in IT, with well-capitalised banks, insurance companies, and brokerage houses moving quickly to automate their transaction-intensive businesses. But the fragmented health care industry, shielded from competition, has been relatively slow to adopt IT, despite its complex information – and transaction-processing requirements.

    From Nicholas G. Carr’s book, Does IT Matter.

    in reply to: Fair Play to Starbucks #763829
    garethace
    Participant

    This project by Pheripherique Architects in France exemplifies for me, the sometimes aggressive urban intervention one has to make, in order to re-interpret an urban space. I don’t know, maybe a Star bucks for the summertime, on squeeshy pink styrofoam furniture – you never know. Beat the dead atmosphere of Cows Lane etc, etc, any day, if one could find a suitable location. But lets face it, there are tonnes of spaces in this city and others crying out for some kind of deliberate use, even if only temporary.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Biomedical Clusters #777781
    garethace
    Participant

    Map of biomedical clusters:

    http://mbbnet.umn.edu/scmap/biotechmap.html

    One of the key things about health privatisation, and usually unspoken, is what Thackara refered to as the ‘privatisation of medical knowledge’.
    In other words, public institutions like Universities end up contributing enormous social value back into society, because every bit of research is in the public domain,
    and therefore ‘available’ to anyone who wants to develop innovations based on that research.
    Which medicine becoming increasingly technologically driven, and the huge investment of capital from private sources, all of that knowledge wealth ends up being owned by private domain too.
    This is one of the strongest arguments I think, against privatisation of health system.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Designing Out of Difficulty #777659
    garethace
    Participant

    What will life be like when our growing economy overshoots its carrying capacity, degrades its resource base, and collapses?

    A gripping description of this more-likely-than-not outcome is included in a British government report about Intelligent Infrastructure Futures.

    http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Intelligent%20Infrastructure%20Systems/Reports%20and%20Publications/Intelligent_Infrastructure_Futures/Index.html

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Cycling in Irish Cities #761399
    garethace
    Participant

    Some other innovations in personal transportation:

    http://www.core77.com/news/archive_02.03.asp

    Frank Llyod Wright would have approved of microcopters I am sure, for jetting around his version of the city.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Transportation Planning #761271
    garethace
    Participant
    in reply to: Cycling in Irish Cities #761394
    garethace
    Participant

    Suburban residents find alternatives to waiting at bus stops.

    Dog-powered Scooters? ?

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    in reply to: Design Conceptualisation: Instrumentalists and the Oracle #763311
    garethace
    Participant

    One of the things about the above pictures I think you will all notice, is it puts something very unambiguous in front of a table of experts, people maybe with different points of view, different specialisations. It basically gives them all something to aim the discussion at. I listened with great interest lately, when Thom Mayne, the Los Angeles Architect spoke here in Dublin. Here is some of my thoughts about Thom Mayne and his process of designing architecture in collaboration with his clients. Thom is a very avid user of high technology too, his sketches being reproduced into scale models via digital means overnight, so that Thom has a new model to work with almost everyday.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

    Karl Popper said our perceptual and mental capacities are restricted by evolution to a particular, limited understanding of the world around us. We are not gods. Popper was concerned with the limits of knowledge and the sorts of structures needed to promote the growth of knowledge despite those limits. Popper tried to show what sort of political structure would best allow for social improvement once we accept the limits of knowledge. Karl Popper suggested something called ‘an open society’. “I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.” Progress requires a critical structure within which competing theories can be tested. Only when a theory could be wrong is it impressive that it survives testing and criticism.

    An open society has to be pluralistic and multicultural, in order to benefit from the maximum number of viewpoints possible to the given problems. Liberal democracies tend to be characterized by tolerance and pluralism; widely differing social and political views, even those viewed as extreme or fringe, are permitted to co-exist and compete for political power on a democratic basis. At the moment the widest of all speculations in physics is superstring theory. It conjectures that all basic particles are different vibrations of extremely tiny loops of great tensile strength. No superstring has yet been observed, but the theory has great explanatory power. What matters in rational debate, is that different positions are open to criticism, which becomes the engine of progress by removing from consideration false theories, leaving only the provisionally best theories behind. The “best” theories could still not be verified or justified, but since they had not been falsified either, they would be preferable to falsified theories. This ought to humble us and cause us to understand our limitations.

    Architects too are hindered by limitations of knowledge. In the twentieth century, architects clung to modernism like it was the only solution. They assumed they had a certain knowledge in their hands, and they became arrogant. Theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers, by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Architects continued to defend modernism when it was found to be flawed. Nowadays, when Thom Mayne is commissioned to do a large public project, he describes the process as negotiation. The most important value being that of mutual respect and tolerance. So that different ideas can coexist and interact. Thom Mayne does not know what a supreme court building should be in 2006. He seems to know better, what a courthouse should not be.

    As an architect Mayne is willing to engage in negotiation with his clients. In his design process, Thom Mayne embraces the plurality of different points of view. In the pluralistic framework, the common good is not given a priori. Instead, the scope and content of the common good can only be found out in and after the process of negotiation (a posteriori). Thom Mayne’s design process leads to a definition and subsequent realization of the common good that is best for all members of society. Thom Mayne talks about an ‘Autogenic’ architecture. Like a body that heals itself from within. You create collisions of different systems. You accept different rules and behaviours. You study junctions and cater for diversity.

    in reply to: Design Conceptualisation: Instrumentalists and the Oracle #763310
    garethace
    Participant
    in reply to: Design Conceptualisation: Instrumentalists and the Oracle #763309
    garethace
    Participant

    Augmented Round Table for Architecture and Urban Planning.

    http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/projekte/arthur/index_en.xml?aspect=overview

    The people in the photos below aren’t what you would call ‘at one’ with the technology yet. But what we are looking at is the beginning of something. The kiddies using entertainment appliances such as the playstation and xbox consoles today, will get very familiar with this world. The kiddies who are growing up with Java mobile phones and all kinds of gadgets. They will not see anything strange as members of the public in the future, playing a more augmented role in the design of our environment. To go into Wood Quay or other Planning desk, and jack themselves into the interactive model of a new development to understand how it will affect them and their lives. This will include projects as large as infrastructure like tunnels and bypasses.

    Architectural education will be different, collaboration between disiplines will be different and processes of building and urban planning will not be like they are today,
    with a few ‘big wigs’ hogging all of the limelight for major urban developments. My best suggestion of the ‘big whigs’ I guess, is enjoy it while it lasts.

    Brian O’ Hanlon.

Viewing 20 posts - 1 through 20 (of 947 total)

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