[in-enaction] Cities and Complexity (cumbersome) Theories

leon morenas wrote:

> radical constructivism that has been strengthened by second order
> cybernetics. Niklas Luhmann is one of the chief people that helps look
> critically at Complexity and a good source for "theodicy" is
> 'Observing Complexity' by Rasch and Wolfe.
>

leon, thanks for the references. i didn't look at urban simulations for 
a long time. how much do these theories owe to Biological Cognition? it 
is difficult for me to judge the liminality between Self Organization 
(which is probably what is referred to, throughout) and Autopoesis in 
using some of the sociological texts. i notice the relation between 
concepts in hard sciences and computation is sometimes an analogic one, 
so there is the risk of substituting a specialized concept for a more 
generic idea, and this leads to obfuscation and cumbersomeness in 
practice. this is my observation of architectural computing research i 
have to review, for example.

so i am skeptical about these claims, and out of my depth -- only 
participated in one radical constructivist design studio.

> I think that my listing of the above models show that they are chiefly
> directed at usability.  As to me hammering peanuts worth of research,
> I am lost as to how I should respond and in what light?


i m aware of models and prototypes which are usually cumbersome to use, 
your criticism in mind. are they also deployed in planning departments? 
i.e., are they used in what Gita would call 'Dynamic Planning' 
processes? how do they compare with more classical (say, frameworks) 
ideas of planning? it is not clear to me as to how these models are 
chiefly directed at usability. i was thinking of simple applications 
like e-mail, and the amount of work it takes to make them usable in 
practice (you could look at the evolution, the work at IBM in 
representing threaded asynchronous communications; the evolution of 
single page applications, for example, the whole evolution that results 
in an actually usable - AJAX - application such as google). simulation 
software like opendx are a pain to install, even, so i am not sure about 
the usability aspect regardless of researcher claims!

> These impressions are my own, in much as the same way you might choose
> not to agree with me.
>

your impressions count. one is evaluating publications stuff in a broad 
context. the question is, how do commercial concerns (even by a 
university press) influence the dissemination of competent research. i 
am looking at journal and peer-reviewed conference proceedings 
publication issues in specific, as the publications officer of some CAAD 
organization.

- anand (apologies about delayed reply, took some time getting the 
books, and i am sure you didn't want me to consult wikipedia :-))