The Greatest Crisis of Our Lives

October 10th, 2008

Over a year ago I read a book titled Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Nassim describes an inherent negative property of information, essentially, that it is difficult or costly to think about, or determine the unknown.

“Alas, we are not manufactured, in our current edition of the human race, to understand abstract matters — we need context. Randomness and uncertainty are abstractions. We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened. In other words, we are naturally shallow and superficial — and we do not know it. This is not a psychological problem; it comes from the main property of information. The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on the unseen is costly in both computational and mental effort.”

- Nassim Taleb

Our refusal to consider the abstract has lead us to our current financial disaster. If you’re unsure, just look at Taleb’s warning of global economic collapse from his 2006 book:

“Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.”

“The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deem these events “unlikely”.”

- Nassim Taleb, Black Swan 2006

It appears that fixing this mess will be left to my generation. Please, educate yourself. A good place to start is the most recent This American Life Podcast. It gives a detailed description of why the financial system is crashing. Another resource is the previously mentioned Black Swan.

Good luck.

Posted in: Economy, Quotes
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The Architecture of Happiness

July 17th, 2008

I was revisiting this excellent introduction to architecture today to compare it with F.L. Wright’s essays . One of my favorite things about architecture is how it marries mathematics and logic with art and humanity. But it wasn’t always this way. Botton writes:

“The principles of engineering may have brutally contradicted those of architecture, but a vocal minority of nineteenth-century architects nevertheless perceived that the engineers were capable of providing them with a critical key to their salvation — for what these men had, and they so sorely lacked, was certainty. The engineers had landed on an apparently impregnable method of evaluating the wisdom of a design: they felt confidently able to declare that a structure was correct and honest in so far as it performed its mechanical functions efficiently; and false and immoral in so far as it was burdened with non-supporting pillars, decorative statues, frescos or carvings.”

-Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

This idea of simplification by reducing beauty and utility into the same structures is fascinating to me. In my last post I quoted Wright speaking about “useful things” and I think this is what he was talking about.

I often times find myself considering the similarities between architecture and web design. Both mediums are interactive, permeable, and require the marriage of style and function. I wonder who I am, the architect or the engineer? The graphic artist or the developer? Great designers are both.

Posted in: Architecture, Books, Design, Quotes
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Frank Lloyd Wright - On Architecture

July 15th, 2008

Yesterday I picked up this book at a used book store downtown. I’ve never read Wright before so when I saw this beautiful cover looking out at me I knew that I needed to. It’s a chronological selection of his writing broken up into several sections with regards to his changing environment, philosophy, and style. So far I’ve only read his earliest works from his early 20s to early 30s, around the turn of the century.

Nearly every paragraph is quotable. Wright’s pen spews forth insight even when the subject may not be exclusively architectural in nature. Take this for example:

“Useful Things. Avoid all things which have no real use or meaning, and make those which have especially significant, for there is no one part of your building that may not be made a thing of beauty in itself as related to the whole.”

and this:

“Decoration. Decoration can tell your friends lots of things that you do not know and would not like if you did. It is of no use to you unless you do understand and appreciate it. It would not be sufficient justification for you to have it just because it looks rich or because somebody else had it.”

-Frank Lloyd Wright, Architecture and the Machine 1894

Incedently, my great great grandfather William Gates lived in Chicago and became good friends with Wright and even commissioned him to create original pottery for his Terra Cotta Company better known as TECO . I haven’t had a chance to visit Chicago yet, but my sister has recently relocated there so I am planning to go.

I hope this can be an ongoing theme of discussion here as I continue to learn about architecture and share my findings. Please feel free to send in related information.

Posted in: Architecture, Books, Design, Quotes
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Arthur C. Clarke

June 28th, 2008

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

- Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of the Future”, 1961 (Clarke’s third law)

Posted in: Quotes
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