GeoDesign Futures: Possibilities,
Probabilities, Certainties, and Wildcards
Stephen Ervin of Harvard Graduate School of Design shares his perspective on the future
direction of geodesign.
http://video.esri.com/watch/1010/geodesign-futures-possibilities_comma_probabilities_comma_-certainties_comma_-and-wildcards
Video Transcription
00:01 When Bill Miller asked me to give this talk at the end of the conference, I was naturally
flattered and challenged…
00:09 …and I readily agreed. And then he said, "By the way, I'd like you to call it, The Future of
Geodesign."
00:16 And I immediately started regretting my decision.
00:20 And I spent some time thinking about it and I decided the very first thing I would do was
add an S, because I think it's…
00:29 …cosmologically true that there really is only one past, but there really are multiple
futures.
00:37 And I want to talk about that in a range of ways that are I hope, either entertaining or
provocative…
00:44 …or at least in the time allotted. And I'm well aware of the potential flaws in making
predictions.
00:55 I know Ken Olsen's from 1977 well, and maybe some of you have also heard about the
nuclear powered vacuum…
01:01 …cleaners that would be a reality in 10 years.
01:03 I will try and steer away from either of these kinds of outrageous claims, but I'll stick a
few in nonetheless.
01:15 I thought one approach, of course, would be to talk about some commendments. I've got a
plan for the future of geodesign.
01:21 And that is tempting, and I might, but that seems a little bit much and the prescriptive
mode is not as interesting…
01:32 …to me for this purpose as the probabilistic mode that I want to adopt here.
01:39 Although, design, of course, is always about drawing a line in the sand and sticking your
neck out…
01:45 …and I'll do that in a few ways too, I think.
01:48 Then I thought, well, Southern California, surely what we need is a movie trailer, but I
realized that I would…
01:57 ...need to know the movie before I could make the trailer, and so, I give you only a
glimpse of the poster…
02:02 …here for next year's required ware.
02:08 And it was in August, and I was kind of getting concerned about getting this started before
the semester came…
02:15 …and would evaporate three months out of my time.
02:18 And Hurricane Irene was working its way up the coast, and I was watching some of the
late night weather predictions…
02:25 …and I realized that I very much admire the combination of making predictions that have
some risk, coupled with…
02:32 …some real impact, and some very geospatial content, and even some pretty cool graphics
from time to time.
02:42 And it seems to me that this idea about cones, or zones, or pyramids of probability, is a
very useful way of looking at…
02:52 …the future and thinking about the future.
02:56 And it reminded me of a slide that I've seen a few times, and I trust others in the audience
have as well, Carl Steinitz's notion…
03:03 …that there is a singular past time at a present moment which expands into a universe of
too many alternate futures…
03:16 …and that, of course, the geodesigner's task often is to thread a path through here to make
one more probable than the rest.
03:24 I think that's the challenge that we have as we think about designing geodesign, is sorting
through all the many…
03:30 …possible futures here and picking one, or at least a couple candidates that we'd like to
make more likely…
03:36 …and then figuring out the path, or paths that might lead to that increased probability.
03:43 And doing my necessary Wikipedia research on futures and futurology, I was reminded, in
this case, actually, of this…
03:51 …idea that future studies might use the rubric of three P's and a W. The possible, the
probable and the preferable futures.
04:01 And wildcards, low probability, but high-impact events.
04:05 And this also seemed like a useful rubric for organizing what was now beginning to be a
set of, yes, sticky notes on my…
04:13 …computer screen, as well as other kinds of thoughts that I was trying to organize in this
process.
04:20 So here we go. I have a range of things that are either prescriptions, or predictions, or
probabilities, more or less…
04:29 …that are on my mind, having thought about this.
04:33 It's possible, in my view, that geodesign will be remembered as nothing but a marketing
buzzword, or what we heard…
04:40 …earlier today, a crisis terminology branding of uncertain meaning from the dawn of the
21st century.
04:47 I consider that low probability, but it's a possibility, to be sure.
04:52 More likely, in my view, is that, indeed, geodesign will evolve and mature as a useful
fusing of GIScience, about which we've…
05:00 …heard a fair amount, and design, about which I don't think we've heard enough yet,
actually.
05:06 I think that's part of the conversation that we have to continue to have with response to
Boykin's and others.
05:12 What does it mean when you fuse these things? 'Cause it's not obvious, by any means.
05:21 I consider it probable that geodesign will not, undoubtedly, inherit the kind of cloudy,
fuzzy boundary, definitional…
05:29 …vagaries that, for example, have plagued landscape architecture forever. What is
landscape architecture anyway?
05:35 Is there a difference between planning and design? Or what does scale matter?
05:39 And these are familiar, and I think in the end, cosmologically intractable discussions.
05:46 And I think it's fine that we will continue to talk about this if we can use it as a way of
probing deeper in understanding.
05:54 I consider it unlikely that any agreed-upon definition will emerge. My colleague, Mike
Flaxman's is relatively widely…
06:03 …quoted in the literature these days. And I like it.
06:07 I think it's crisp and I understand it, but it doesn't capture a couple of things that for me,
for today, are important.
06:17 And I want to make sure that we include digital, because for me, that's actually one of the
watershed things that's at work here.
06:24 I do not think that Frank Lloyd Wright and Frederick Law Olmsted were doing geodesign.
06:28 I think they were doing important work from which we have learned and upon which we
are building.
06:33 But for my purposes, if it happened before about 1970, it wasn't geodesign.
06:40 And I'm going to say a little bit more about systems thinking, which I think is an important
component of this…
06:50 …in the discussion well enough, and I want to resurface it.
06:56 I should mention by the way, that as a child of the '60s as I am, I was a member, perhaps
an advocate, of the appropriate…
07:06 …technology movement. Does anybody remember it? Yeah, appropriate technology?
Yeah.
07:10 So you know that appropriate technology was this idea that given a problem, there were
some technologies that…
07:16 …were more appropriate than others to be applied.
07:19 And in general, low-tech that we learned about, that vise grips were probably more
appropriate than robots…
07:26 …and that various other kinds of agriculture were better than recombinant DNA, and so
on.
07:32 This was a very ideological position. And I took it, and I actually moved through some
change in my own thinking.
07:40 I remember quite literally, an article by Steven Baer in the CoEvolution Quarterly, in
which he talked about…
07:46 …computer satellites and lasers as the epitome of inappropriate technology.
07:50 I'm here to tell you today they are absolutely essential for what we are doing in my
definition of geodesign for the now.
07:56 They are appropriate technology.
08:00 A certainty is a very large number. It's been cited a couple of times already in the
conference.
08:07 You guys have been conservative thinking about nine billion people on the planet.
08:11 I think in this anthropocene era that we are entering, 10 billion is probably realistic.
08:17 And it is for these people that we do geodesign. It's not for the trees, or the hydrological
systems, or the atmosphere.
08:24 It's for the 10 billion people that are our inheritors of what we do.
08:30 And that's an important piece of this, 'cause it means there's a whole bunch of technology
that comes from anthropology…
08:36 …and sociology, and other things like that, we might learn and, indeed, embed in what we
do as…
08:43 These images, by the way, are made by a pseudo statistically scientific method of taking a
number of racial…
08:50 …prototypes and overlaying them in Photoshop to get a sort of an average person.
08:56 The average person, according to National Geographic, is a 28-year-old male Han Chinese
somewhere over here.
09:04 And it is absolutely certain to me that a lot of geodesign in the future, will be on the Asian
continent…
09:09 …'cause that's where the action is and where a good percentage of those 10 billion people
are going to be.
09:18 And they can use it. The emergent environment throughout the world is in trouble in a lot
of ways, and none more visibly…
09:29 …at least in my recent experience, than some parts of China.
09:35 And at the same time, China is a place with boundless imagination and potential, and
figuring out how to tap into that…
09:44 …and overcome the many issues of environmental and other kinds of problems that have
to be tackled there…
09:51 …is part of the grand challenge that we have ahead of us.
09:55 Some work from one of our student, recent studios, looking at a combination of
sustainable agriculture with new…
10:02 …transit-oriented urbanization in the expanding regions of Beijing is, I think, typical of
the kind of work that's…
10:11 …going to have to be done. And it's probable that much geodesign is going to be urban.
10:17 The greenfields, and even the brownfields that we've talked about, are simply not the
majority of the Earth's population…
10:24 …with nearly two-thirds…and here, for example, is Mumbai, which needs some
geodesign, and which the
10:29 …GSD and lots of other places are beginning to look at and work with, and in.
10:38 And this, couple of things have happened in the two months that I've been thinking about
this and working on this…
10:44 …in early December, the TED Prize was announced.
10:47 I don't know if any of you noticed this, not for a person, but indeed, to this concept of the
city 2.0.
10:54 Because urbanization is one of the century's biggest issues.
10:56 And over the next 90 years, we will build more urban living space than all prior centuries
combined.
11:01 We had better get it right, and that's the imperative for geodesign.
11:06 I note that the Rotterdam Architecture BNL is going to have esteemed exhibition on smart
cities…
11:15 …and on which one of our Harvard student's projects will be displayed.
11:21 And I note the emergence of the term U-city, or ubiquitous city, which is a city or region
with ubiquitous…
11:28 …information technology. That's why I stuck it in my definition partly, 'cause it's a gamechanging thing.
11:34 We're all immersed in it and we may not have noticed how game-changing it is, but if we
remember back to the AT time…
11:41 …or the pre-'70s time, and think about this really…this is some…this is not just a tool, it's
a medium in a way…
11:50 …and it's also transformative in ways that are important.
11:52 We can't just pretend that the pencil isn't going to be part of the design, because the
technology is part…
11:57 …of what we're designing these days, and designing with.
12:02 And absolutely certain, I heard Margaret Mead say this first 35 years ago at the UN
Habitat Conference in Vancouver…
12:09 …"Water." We've heard it a couple of times already in this conference, and there's no
doubt that it's going to get worse…
12:15 …before it gets any better. And this is going to be a major, major consideration, whether
it's the shortage, a purity…
12:23 …and availability of it, or the excess of it in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is
confounding what we have to do.
12:31 And how we manage this distribution of water and other resources in three dimensions
across the geoscape is indeed…
12:41 …the principle task as I see it, of geodesign in the future.
12:47 And probable, in my view, is that public health and environmental health will increasingly
be part of…
12:53 …what we do and what we have to do.
12:55 This hearkens back to Frederick Law Olmsted's motivations in many parts, in cases, and
Central Park, and others…
13:02 …to the origins of GIS in thinking about the Well and, indeed, recent publications such as
Dick Jackson's…
13:10 …Designing Healthy Communities, and others, are there on the horizon and on the
desktop in front of us…
13:16 …as part of this exercise. It's part of what we have to do.
13:20 I consider it probable that geodesign will increasingly involve sensors. Sensors that are
embedded in the environment…
13:28 …indeed, in us, or in our cars, and entries, and it's already happening. The sensors are all
around us in a wide range of ways.
13:36 And this is giving access to the information that makes the design different and possible in
certain ways.
13:43 Real-time so that we have, not just sort of static base data, but interactive, instantly
available, up-to-date information…
13:51 …as part of what we're doing.
13:53 And not just remote sensing from the satellites up there, but what I call intimate sensing,
as part of what we do.
13:59 Has some possibly creepy implications, but it's part of the world that we live in.
14:09 Here, for example, is some work from Carlo Ratti's SENSEable City Lab at MIT, tracking
information that's coming in…
14:19 …across the cell phone towers outside of Rome as a way of understanding the structure
and function of the city.
14:32 And here's an interesting project that I found, which I think epitomizes what I've just
talked about at this combination…
14:38 …of things. This project to develop a new system for assessing the condition of flood
control infrastructures that's…
14:43 …got mounds of earth and mechanized walls, and infrared and wireless sensors, and a
network of repeaters…
14:53 …and watches, and satellites, and people at computers that are all together modifying,
monitoring the environment…
14:59 …and modifying the environment at the same time.
15:02 In this case, for flood control, but you can imagine this principle applied to a wide range,
traffic control…
15:07 …and crowd control, and housing systems, and sewage treatment, and all kinds of things
that I think is part of what we do.
15:14 We're not just designing that anymore, we're increasingly designing this as well, as part of
the designs that we make.
15:22 I consider it probable that biology will be increasingly important in what we do.
15:26 That we'll talk the need to have more biologists in the room. Anybody self-identify as a
biologist in here?
15:33 See, we're missing a large part, a pretty important science in what we do as part of this
community discussion.
15:39 And the whole world exploding right now of so-called bioengineering as we try and
understand what does that mean?
15:45 And particularly something called biomimicry. Who's heard of this? Good, thank
goodness.
15:51 So those of you who haven't, it's fabulous. You've got to read up about it. This idea of
understanding from nature.
15:56 How has nature solved problems of insulation, and lubrication, and distribution, in ways
that we can learn from.
16:04 There's a burgeoning technology here, and it's going to be important to geodesign as we
move forward.
16:10 I consider it probable that we will move from pattern making to pattern finding and
reinforcing.
16:16 The word pattern has been used a few time here. I consider, for example, Harlequin Plaza.
16:21 When I was a student at getting my undergraduate, my graduate degree in landscape
architecture…
16:25 …Hargreaves was checkerboard and the landscape there was magazine cover material.
16:31 It's been recently remodeled. The checkerboard is barely there, and it's classically static
and symmetrical…
16:37 …and compare that to the patterns that we see flying over the country now, or that are
available in Google Earth…
16:44 …that are richer than the simple black and white checkerboard as material with which to
work.
16:54 I consider it unlikely that current visualization tools will be sufficient.
16:58 No matter how many rectangular TV screens you may have, we need more than that.
17:05 Geodesign representation will require a move beyond maps, graphs, pictures, and movies
as we currently understand them…
17:11 …as rectangular-bounded things, into a range of visualization that will include 4D, that's
animation, or m-dimensional…
17:21 …which includes a range of other tactile, or other kinds of dimensions of information that
we can learn from…
17:28 …and use, both for design exploration, and communication representation.
17:34 One thing is certain, augmented reality is here to stay.
17:38 Most of us are today carrying cell phones that enable this technology of, hold it up to the
world and see overlaid on…
17:46 …the view of the world, either where the Starbucks is, or who owns this land, or what's
the soil type, or biodiversity…
17:55 …whatever it is, this combination of being able to look at additional pieces, those are the
m-dimensionals of the visualization…
18:01 …added into what we think of as the three space that we inhabit, is changing the way we
can see and understand…
18:09 …the world as part of this geodesign process.
18:16 I wish my videos were working. Do you have any understanding of why they might not
be?
18:21 'Cause the last two haven't worked and it would be kind of really great if…say again?
18:26 Have to use the mouse to hit Play.
18:27 I have to use the mouse to hit Play. This mouse?
18:36 I wish I could say that this digital gestural grading by thumb swipe idea was a prototype
that I was ready to show you.
18:46 It's not; it's still a fantasy, and that was just a demo, but gestural interfaces are also clearly
here to stay.
18:52 The idea that I have to drag the mouse is annoying today.
18:56 We know that swiping and moving and using the three space that our body inhabits…
19:02 …or perhaps that our crowd inhabits, is a way of communicating and can be sensed, and
we ought to be able to use it…
19:08 …and we will in our future geodesign activities.
19:12 Virtual realities have been around for a while and are being in use in various places as part
of what we do.
19:17 And immersive displays in ways, as John Dennehy talked about, that engage our
peripheral vision, is part of what geodesign…
19:24 …can, and will be doing in the future, I'm quiet certain.
19:29 And who didn't want access to this avatar interface?
19:37 Ignore the arrogant military planner there and remember this fabulous technology.
19:51 The technology for that, of course, is just Hollywood special effects, but much of it exists,
and we've seen already…
19:59 …examples of pretty primitive holographic displays that do stuff partially, and it's only a
matter of time, in my view…
20:08 …and I'm here to talk about the future, so that's in our future, absolutely.
20:13 I consider it likely that geodesign will continue to inherit technology from the military and
from Hollywood as we will…
20:19 …in the case of that.
20:22 I consider it unlikely that the military, or Hollywood will ever learn from geodesign. I
hope I'm wrong.
20:34 It's certain, in my view, that simulations will be more and more required, easier and easier
to make…
20:40 …and more and more reliable and interesting. Is there any way we can turn this one on, as
well? There we go.
20:48 So here's a stream simulation from the Virtual StreamLab at the University of Minnesota.
20:54 We're getting good enough knowledge about the laws of physics, and the laws of water,
and light…
21:00 …and other kinds of particles, and the ability to compute with them, that we can really
make incredibly powerful…
21:06 …simulations of almost anything we think we understand, and use that as a test for how
well we understand it…
21:11 …which has long been a role in simulation and science, and it's increasingly a part of what
we do in geodesign.
21:18 By the way, I consider simulations in the largest possible renderings are simple
simulations as well.
21:25 Often not as interesting as this, but…
21:29 And indeed, physical and tangible simulations and interfaces are part of it.
21:33 It's not, oh, I've got a fascination with things digital, of course, but I understand the role of
things analog as well…
21:39 …and the idea that this sort of classic model of 3D printing of buildings that you walk
through with a camera with…
21:46 …a lens on a stalk, could also be further informed. Each one of those things has got
sensors in it and has got various…
21:53 …kinds of information embedded into it so that the analog and the digital are working
together in a hybrid mix…
21:59 …that's even more powerful than either one of them alone.
22:04 I consider it possible that ontologies for geodesign will become more comprehensive and
embedding in our practice.
22:10 An ontology is just a big word for a list of words, but it's got an important idea which is,
that we come to a shared…
22:18 …vocabulary with shared semantics and meaning, that's what makes communication
possible.
22:23 If we all think the word geodesign means something completely different, it leads to rather
confused conversations…
22:30 …and especially as we want to begin to engage more automatic reasoning of various sorts,
perhaps by computers…
22:39 …it's important that they will have something to look up, what does he mean by
streambed, in a way that becomes…
22:45 …accessible. So that this idea of an evolving…
22:48 The GeoDesign Knowledge Portal that's available here online, right now.
22:53 You can Google that out, thanks to the folks at Redlands Institute, is the beginning step in
this direction.
23:03 I consider it unlikely that any dominant software is going to continue to dominate in this
world.
23:09 And rather, that there were apps for that. There will be applications and web services as
part of the evolution of what…
23:19 …we mean by software and how we use, develop, and distribute software, is becoming a
more distributed and cloudy…
23:27 …enterprise, whether it's open source or closed source or other, the idea that software is
monolithic and packaged in a single…
23:35 …release, I think is prehistoric, and the future has a much more distributed, granular, and
modular shape to it, much like…
23:45 …the phones that we're all carrying today.
23:50 Here's a wildcard. That indeed, there will be some open source consortium that will get
together, and indeed, organize…
23:56 …industrial-strength geodesign apps that are distributed over the web to everybody, and
available to citizens all…
24:04 …over the globe, to do what we're talking about here.
24:06 And maybe we will be able to borrow from Esri something more than just the illustration
that they've nicely provided here.
24:13 But the contributions to that side, of how do we make and open up the algorithms that lead
to these things so we can…
24:21 …talk about them in a scientific way, about whether the procedural engine is doing what
we really expected…
24:26 …or just what it wants to do, will be an important part of the evolution of geodesign
software.
24:32 I have another thought about the evolution of geodesign software.
24:35 I've presented this idea at a conference earlier in last year, the Digital Landscape
Architecture Conference…
24:42 …and this is my thought for what I think are the 15 essential elements of a geodesign
toolbox.
24:50 Carl's framework that he's described is a conceptual one; this is a, more of a tool builder's
and, frankly, tool user's…
24:58 …approach to the problem. In my view, geodesign is mostly the process of arraying a
bunch of objects…
25:05 …by which I mean either trees, or highways, or sensor systems, on some base, which is
typically topographic and often…
25:15 …has parts of it that are not part of the design, but the context within which the design
happens, by specifying some…
25:22 …configuration, by which I mean the 2D, or 3D, or 4D layout of those objects in that base
context environment…
25:30 …typically subject to some constraints, either implicit or explicit, that is, the houses must
be parallel to the road, or…
25:37 …the road shouldn't be in the water, and other kinds of constraints that are part of this
exercise, often by making…
25:43 …access to a library where we look up objects or precedents or constraints that can be
applied in this.
25:51 Often increasingly in collaboration with other players. Often distributed in asynchronously
over time.
25:58 Usually producing multiple, and not only sequential, but also branching versions of a
design, which we might…
26:06 …want to keep, some of which die, some of which become the final one, that embed a
whole range of levels of abstraction.
26:15 That's what LOA is. There's some very specific materials with concrete dimensions and
colors, and there's some…
26:20 …much more cloudy ideas like democracy, or radiality, or symmetry that are also
embedded in these documents…
26:27 …and need to be tracked, and often have a specific relationship; but concrete thing is often
the instance of some…
26:34 …higher-level idea which can be substituted for with some other equivalent one.
26:39 And I consider the management of diagrams, which is a particular piece of this exercise, to
be an important part…
26:46 …of managing the levels of abstraction because that's where these high-level ideas get the
beginnings of some…
26:53 …topological relationships, not yet topographic.
26:58 And that we have learned, thanks to the web, that documents need not just be on their face,
but can be linked…
27:05 …to other pieces of information. So you can click on a drawing and get a video, and click
on a video and get some text…
27:11 …and that's what we need to be able to manage, not just construction drawings that could
be printed out and…
27:16 …rolled up under our arm.
27:18 And that in so doing, we need access to modeling and scripting languages, programming,
or macrowriting, if you will…
27:25 …so that we can both embed all the kinds of models that we make for evaluation, but also,
as we've seen for parametric…
27:32 …generation, of objects and their configurations subject to constraints.
27:37 And that these things need to be aware of time, both seasonal change, or the schedule for
construction for this particular…
27:46 …project in a way that's not just geographic anymore, but is actually 4D.
27:53 And that we need a huge range of kinds of simulations ranging from the simple aspatial
scientific ones, or mathematical…
28:01 …ones, or indeed, the renderings and various other kinds of visual simulations that we
make in this exercise.
28:09 That we need dashboards that surface some small number of key metrics by which we
evaluate how we're doing…
28:16 …with our design and know if it's getting better or getting worse, or according to how
much it's going to cost…
28:21 …and we've seen some great examples of almost all of these, with some exceptions, in the
last 48 hours.
28:27 And a bow to my colleague and mentor in many ways, a methods coach might be
embedded into such a system…
28:37 …so that we know that there are possibilities for different ways of solving problems. And
maybe, although I've not ever…
28:43 …been a fan of the animated paper clip avatar that says, "Can I help you?"
28:48 But perhaps some less intrusive and a little bit more well-integrated avatar, artificial
intelligence assistant…
28:56 …might pop up and say, "I notice that in the last couple of tries, your key metrics haven't
gotten any better. Maybe you…
29:03 ...should consider this one done, or maybe you'd like to try another method?"
29:09 And I think that that's possible that with the kinds of ontologies and intelligences that we
know are going to happen…
29:15 …we can have this as part of our system in the future.
29:18 I want to pick a few of these for further emphasis. I really do consider it likely that we will
have objects in…
29:25 …what is importantly the object-oriented sense that computer programmers talk about,
that objects are parts…
29:32 …or instances of classes of objects that share behaviors and properties.
29:37 This is a real-world…when you grab a house, you want it to act like a house…
29:41 …and when you grab a tree, you want it to act like a tree.
29:44 And this is such a common idea in manipulation of things that if you have to grab a circle
that stands for a tree, it's not…
29:51 …satisfactory and it's not our future.
29:54 You can see my further thoughts on this in last year's GeoDesign Summit videos that are
online.
30:01 I consider it probable we will get, at some point, full 3D integration and stop
distinguishing between CAD…
30:08 …on the one hand, and GIS on the other hand, or building information models, or
landscaping for models…
30:14 …on the other hand, and that, as in this example by our iconoclastic architect, Zaha Hadid,
the distinction…
30:22 …between what polygon is part of the roof, and what polygon is part of the park, is an
unnecessary distinction…
30:30 …in this complex geometry that we have to be able to support.
30:34 I do consider it probable that constraints, that is, the formal articulation typically in a
mathematical or logical form…
30:43 …of the relationships between things, which may or may not be broken, and should be
propagated or observed as part of…
30:51 …our design future…it's already embedded in a range of ways in many 2D and 3D
modeling environments…
30:58 …where you can CERT this line has to always be parallel to that line, and when this one
moves, this one will move with it.
31:04 That's a very simple idea, but it's very powerful. In fact, it's so powerful that I only
consider this probable…
31:11 …and not certain, 'cause there are some really hard problems, as it turns out, with this.
31:16 What should happen when there are conflicts? When two constraints conflict with each
other.
31:20 You said it had to be parallel, and now you've made it not parallel. Should the paper clip
pop up and say, "Ah, did you notice?"
31:26 Should you automatically spawn two versions and one of each case?
31:31 Do you want things to appear in red on your drawings so you know where the violations
are?
31:35 Do you want to change your [unintelligible] so there's a complicated interactive problem,
but it's an important part of…
31:41 …the design systems of the future.
31:44 And I should probably call this absolutely certain, managing versions, which most of us do
today by renaming files…
31:51 …latest and latest, latest, right?
31:54 Well, we can do better than that. The software development environment has what are
called version control systems…
32:01 …that keep track of this in a very formal way that allows you to go back to any point in
time and branch two different…
32:07 …versions, or merge together two different versions, keep track of who made what
changes, when, and how…
32:12 …did they propagate, and that's got to be a part of the future, and I know that Esri is going
to continue to work on ways…
32:19 …of making this part of the suite of tools that are provided for managing the documents
that get produced in this process.
32:26 Unfortunately, I consider it unlikely that we will ever achieve what I would consider full
computational support for diagrams…
32:33 …because, again, it's a hard problem.
32:36 It's like recognizing speech, which, if you look at your iPhone, you know that it's not that
hard anymore.
32:43 But this is really something where understanding the intentions that are represented by
squiggles, or bubbles and arrows…
32:50 …and turning them into constraints, which is what our mind does with them, is still
probably going to be the…
32:56 …province of wetware, or human intelligence, for the foreseeable future.
33:02 But I do look forward to also being wrong in this and possibly being part of making it
happen sooner, rather than later.
33:10 So that's a quick tour through some of the things that I think are in the future for our
software for geodesign systems.
33:19 I'm certain that systems thinking will prevail. Systems thinking is being taught at
elementary school now…
33:28 …thanks to this project from the Waters Foundation, and consists of such simple-minded
ideas as in recognizing…
33:36 …that a system's structure generates its behavior, or changing your perspective to increase
understanding…
33:41 …or a whole range of ideas that have to do with this simple, but deep, systems idea that
the sum is greater than the…
33:52 …whole of the parts, or you know what I meant, and that there are actually emergent
properties when we start…
33:57 …putting things together, and systems can become too complicated for any one person to
understand.
34:03 And it's not just elementary school, by the way. I recommend to you this book by Donella
Meadows.
34:08 She of the Club of Rome report that wrote, put out the Limits to Growth, thinking in
Systems, is the name of the book and…
34:17 …if you want to…if you don't want a whole book on this topic, if you Google, dancing
with systems, you'll find about…
34:23 …a three-or four-page kind of poetic essay that she wrote near the end of her life which is
quite moving and quite informative…
34:30 …I think, and an essential part of how we think about the problems that we are
geodesigning with.
34:38 I consider it possible that ideas such as resilient design, and permaculture, and cradle-tocradle, and all these other…
34:45 …ideas about what constitutes good, rather than less good design, will become part of our
geodesign thinking.
34:56 Absolutely certain that geodesign and designers will be connected, multidisciplinary,
distributed, and build connections.
35:05 That's what partly we do with all of these things as we realize that fundamental ecological
adage that…
35:11 …everything is connected to everything, and part of what we need to do is to understand
where to reinforce…
35:16 …and how to identify those networks.
35:22 Here's a fabulous graphic which, you'll have to take my word for it, unless you have really,
really good eyesight…
35:28 …but this is a galaxy of points, each of which represents a scientific journal and a range of
disciplines, like architecture…
35:38 …and social, and psychology, and so on, and an analysis of the click streams of web users
over a period of time.
35:45 People who are reading journals in this discipline, got linked over by reference to a journal
in this discipline and…
35:51 …got linked over by a reference to a journal in this discipline.
35:54 And so, there are clusters of disciplines. Architecture happens to be right here, and it's not
far from ecology.
36:01 On the one hand, classical studies in music, but it's very far away from systems,
engineering, and materials…
36:09 …properties, or public health, and we have to begin to build these connections. We need
them.
36:16 We need our colleagues in all of these disciplines, and it's a connected world we live in.
36:22 In this vein, I consider it probable that the so-called web of things will be part of what we
do.
36:28 I showed you an example of the web of things with that flood control system.
36:33 The idea that things, like cars, and toasters, and trees, have sensors embedded in them and
become part of a network that's…
36:41 …not just computers with servers with HTTP daemons, but indeed, a much more dynamic
web of interactive…
36:49 …information emitting and sensing and responding things in the world. And this is
happening right now.
36:57 I consider it probably that robodozing will become more widespread. I was part of a
conference a decade ago…
37:04 …about the emergence of autonomous robotically controlled bulldozers transforming the
world.
37:10 And Caterpillar is hard at work on this. They've got them in a range of public…range of
sites that are mostly have a driver…
37:19 …in them to reassure people that there's someone there to step on the brakes or pull the
emergency stop, and otherwise…
37:25 …they run completely autonomously. You stick your USB key into the dashboard, it's got
the TIN of the terrain, or…
37:32 …the path to be traveled, and it does it on its own.
37:36 Robots in general, are part of our world and will increasingly be so. And imagine when the
D12, that's a large bulldozer…
37:45 …starts talking back to your cell phone. [inaudible] That's our future.
38:03 Terraforming. Maybe you noticed the word that appeared on the screen in last night's
keynote talk amongst all the…
38:09 …flying words that appeared on the screens in that talk.
38:12 And this idea, as a reader of…an avid reader of science fiction over the years, the idea that
earthshaping of a planet…
38:18 …moon, or other body, the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying it to make it
more habitable by terrestrial…
38:25 …organisms, is sadly, what we have to do on our own home planet, increasingly.
38:37 And I couldn't have that reference without showing you these pictures of a dystopic [sic.]
past.
38:42 These are robodozer's terrestrial moving, changing soft coal excavation machines from the
ex-East Germany.
38:54 That must have been a horrible place to live when they were actually working.
39:00 Likely that we will have flying robots increasingly in the world and the projects that we
work on.
39:06 Mostly these are for surveillance right now, and they're routinely deployed in a wide range
of things, not just in the…
39:13 …military, or for Hollywood, but for local surveys where you can get very up-close aerial
surveys over any area…
39:21 …under pretty easy remote radio control, remote control.
39:27 Unlikely, I suppose that Ron Herron and Archigram's idea of The Walking City, of
enormous robotic legs…
39:36 …that had 5,000 people living in them, walking over the earth, changing, and finding a
good place for them.
39:43 But I've always liked the drawings, so I sort of regret that.
39:48 Probable that the term geofencing will become part of our vocabulary. How many of you
have used this?
39:54 So geofencing is the simple idea that rather than having to build a real fence, I can just
draw a polygon on my CAD system…
40:03 …or screen of any sort, and coupled with some control devices like you might put on a
dog, or a prisoner, I've got a…
40:11 …very real fence enabled by the network, and the computers, and the satellites that we've
talked about.
40:18 This is being marketed today. You can Google it, and mostly as techniques for managing
the employee accountability and…
40:27 …productivity. Know where your delivery truck has gone. But it's got a dark side
possibility, and this has become…
40:37 …a topic of discussion in geography as part of what we think about the future and the
meaning of this and the…
40:46 …particularly dark version of it called geoslavery, which actually carries this to its logical
if, unsavory extreme…
40:56 …whereby we can actually use these technologies to keep track of people in ways that
they might not like, or want.
41:02 And it's entirely possible that these things will become part of what we do either wittingly,
or unwittingly in…
41:08 …our geodesign projects using this technology, and I hope we don't.
41:14 It's certain, in my view, that geodesign will be multiscale, indeed, already is, from the
nanotech to the global.
41:22 Unfortunately, we've got to know about all that these days. The education problems we
have are enormous in this regard.
41:29 I refer you to Bruce Mau's book called Massive Change.
41:32 This is not just about the world of design, it's about the design of the world, and it's a
particularly well put together…
41:39 …both graphically and conceptually, in my view, kind of exposition of the range of topics
that we will have to…
41:45 …engage with, as designers for the future world that we really want.
41:52 And Hack the Planet, available via Amazon, where we really talk about changing Earth
systems with things like…
42:01 …synthetic volcanoes and, again, last night's Keynote Address talked a little about this
modification of earth's systems on…
42:09 …a planetary and global scale. And that's geodesign in many ways.
42:17 Probable that nanotechnology will it be important. Here's a map of various projects in
nanobiology, the evolution of…
42:25 …viruses that can change the way plants behave on the planet, what they do with water,
and how they move nutrients…
42:32 …and minerals around. All of which could be really fabulous but gives the idea of a global
virus a kind of a new…
42:39 …and frightening meaning at the same time.
42:44 Hence, I'm sure that geodesign ethics will emerge.
42:47 We've heard the word already in the conversations that have started around here and will
be controversial because…
42:54 …there are, it's a multicultural complicated world we live in, and it's not always clear
what's the right thing to do…
43:01 …and this is going to be part of both our professional life, and our educational challenge
in that regard.
43:09 Possible that we will one day do geodesign on the moon. That's the nearest target, or
elsewhere.
43:15 And fortunately, there's a book to guide us, Beyond Spaceship Earth: Environmental
Ethics and the Solar System.
43:20 So as we move out to Mars and Jupiter, we'll be able to have some guidance in that
process.
43:28 I consider it possible that our education system will evolve in the ways that we've seen
here and keep up with…
43:33 …the demands. And I consider it possible that it might not. And in so doing, we would fail
our most important…
43:40 …contributors, our children. And this is also part of the challenge that we have as we
move forward.
43:47 Here's another unlikely wildcard, the direct brain computer interface. This is not science
fiction, this is real technology…
43:54 …right now mostly used for people with various kinds of physical handicaps who can
learn to control the physical…
44:01 …world by just brainwaves. Right now you can buy a headset from Amazon to allow you
to try and control the paddle…
44:09 …on a game of Pong, and that's this year. The future on this is also interesting,
complicated, a little…
44:17 …creepy, if you think about it running signals the other way, so you could have, you
know, Orson Welles…
44:23 …"Feelies", not just movies, but you actually sense the whole thing coming through this
interaction, or various kinds…
44:28 …of mind control. I don't want to spin too wildly out of control here.
44:33 It started with a very large number, and I'll end now with two small numbers.
44:38 Two plus two makes four, or it makes for us a pretty complicated future if we get global
warming of two degrees C…
44:45 …or more, an ocean-level rise of two meters or more, we really will have an FGDC.
44:53 Some of you, I know, think you know what that stands for, but it's a future geodesign
challenge.
45:05 Just before Thanksgiving, last November, NASA released this image, the first synthetic
visible infrared view…
45:17 …of the entire globe, captured by the new VIIRS instrument aboard the NPP satellite that
went up there, so now we…
45:25 …have every 24 hours, a view of the planet's invisible infrared. That's only the tip of an
iceberg of the kind of…
45:33 …information that we're going to increasingly have, and need, as we move forward in
dealing with these grand…
45:40 …geodesign challenges. And if we get this planet under control, there are apparently a few
others out there in the…
45:52 …world that we'll have to deal with. Thank you.
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