Tending

There are a huge number of parallels that are constantly being drawn between systems design and architecture. In particular, danah boyd goes down this path in “from architecture to urban planning: technology development in a networked age.” danah writes:

“I’m reminded of a book by Stewart Brand – How Building Learn. In it, Brand talks about how buildings evolve over time based on their use and the aging that takes place. A building is not just the end-result of the designer, but co-constructed by the designer, nature, and the inhabitant over time. When i started thinking about technology as architecture, i realized the significance of that book. We cannot think about technologies as finalized products, but as evolving architectures. This should affect the design process at the getgo, but it also highlights the differences between physical and digital architectures. What would it mean if 92 million people were living in the house simultaneously with different expectations for what colors the walls should be painted? What would it mean if the architect was living inside the house and fighting with the family about the intention of the mantel?

The networked nature of web technologies brings the architect into the living room of the house, but the question still remains: what is the responsibility of a live-in architect? Coming in as an authority on the house does no good – in that way, the architect should still be dead. But should the architect just be a glorified fixer-upper/plumber/electrician? Should the architect support the aging of the house to allow it to become eccentric?”

I think in a co-created world, the role of the tender-of-the-system is a bit different even from what danah alludes to in the last paragraph above. With millions of individuals interacting with a system, it would be impossible to “architect” where the system should go once the system begins to interact with its environment. And the tender-of-the-system certainly should not be locked into the role of the glorified fixer-upper/plumber/electrician. Not only is it not fulfilling, it also eventually dooms a system to stagnancy.

When there are millions of forces acting on a system, isn’t it necessary for that system to become more biological in nature, to absorb and react to the various forces acting on it? And if so, shouldn’t the role of the system’s steward be more like that of a gardener — watering over here, providing a trellis for support over there, and even pruning where it is required in order to ensure the vibrancy of the whole system, while still allowing it to grow and interact and exhibit emergent properties that could never have been forseen?