Incredible! There was something fascinating to think about on every page. I see why this book is mentioned so often. The photo and drawing references were brilliantly chosen. I kept seeing parallels with building software as well. A billion stars.
The rare book relevant to both my YIMBY work and open community work. MediaWiki is very much a building that has learned; I hope the next generation of Wikipedians can keep that alive. XKCD’s “guy in Nebraska” is also a part of a structure that learns, but precariously and with less provision for systemic, cross-ecosystem learning than Wikipedia. On the flip side, we’re never going to build what Brand calls “low” buildings in SF again; at best we’ll get some ADUs but mostly we’ll get a lot of big buildings. That’s good and needed but they’ll never be great buildings in the way our Edwardians are.
