[ox-en] Re: Franz Nahrada * A Pattern Language Of The Postindustrial Society
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:36:48 +0100
Hi Franz and all!
Some comments.
7 minutes ago Stefan Merten wrote:
Alexanders approach, though ontologically similar, is radically
different in its perspective. Rather than focussing on the dynamics of
constant change, he rather asks what is recurring and what is stable.
He reserves the term pattern to structures that prove as timeless,
because they have an inherent quality of enhancing and supporting a
wide range of activities.
In fact that is a feature of (design) patterns which I know also from
software architecture where design patterns today play a major role.
However, from this definition you can't define patterns in advance but
can only observe them and define them as some sort of best practices.
More theoretically speaking I think (design) patterns are just another
name for a certain type of abstractions. In fact some people may seem
to recognize the concept of abstractions by learning about (design)
patterns. I'd see this less as a strength of (design) patterns and
more as a lack of scientific education, though...
In fact it's difficult to find abstractions / patterns and you really
need to be an expert on the subject with lots of experience. In
particular you need to distinguish carefully the *content* of a
pattern with the pattern itself.
The idea
that you love a physical person in a highly exclusive way - like you
love God - was brought up by the medieval renaissance.
I'd agree that this is a major shift. But isn't this better described
as a paradigm shift than as a new pattern? From the pattern "love" I'd
say this is not a new pattern because the pattern is the same and only
the content is changed.
Take for
example the permaculture movement. Permaculture is revolutionizing our
relation with the biological environment, because nature is not any
more considered an object of human labor and control, but rather as a
self-organizing system in a way very similar to design patterns: doing
almost all of the work and maintaining itself, if arranged properly.
But "arranging things properly" *is* perfect control - isn't it? So
I'd not say that this is a new pattern in this respect. It's a new way
of doing agriculture, yes, but the agriculture pattern is kept.
It is probably no incident that this special view of nature has
emerged simultaneously with the use of cybernetics and modern
information theory.
Sure this is not by chance. The romantic view of nature is the
counter-movement to more and more technology. However, it is in many
ways a backward oriented movement dreaming of a view of nature which
never was reality - not even before the romantic era which all
invented this paradigm of seeing nature.
In a way and even with a certain degree of justification, the market
system could be considered as a first attempt to enact such autonomous
behaviour of subsystems
Yes. Markets are perfect examples of autonomous agents interacting
which each other without central control.
The information that is
conveyed by money is almost zero and necessarily overshadowed by
inherent bias.
True. One reason is the abstraction money represents. Money abstracts
From nearly everything - but this makes things comparable and this is
a precondition for complex markets.
So some might still work on a pattern of informed and informing money,
but in fact the Internet by its very existence indicates the ability
of much more precise information transfer between autonomous
subsystems.
If you communicate measures of things then it is really misleading to
call this money.
Grüße
Stefan