<html><head></head><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Dear Simon Taylor,</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you for bringing <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">Albert-László Barabási in the discourse. I am very interested in your observations. My idea about your question will be that the ruling concept in this distinction between the network and the "real" world is the concept of protocol. In the net we seem to be used to be voluntarily restricted by strong, operative protocols that we accept in order to give meaning to any connection. We have not seen what this acceptance will bring as an after effect to "reality". States, constitutions and legislation were systems of protocols that seem very old to operate in this condition. Companies are quicker: they are already adapted in many senses to this different "protocol world" where, when it is question of connection, we obliged to accept a strong system where communication is predefined and categorized as a restricted system of answers to specific questions or an affirmation of a interchangeable, chosen (between others) platform. The concept of protocol that became so strong on the Internet seeks its possible incarnation in "reality" while the net and the real lose the meaning of their distinction. Your questions, Simon, show this dead end: what would mean today the concept of urban protocols? How the concept of protocol will be grounded on our existing cities in order to transform them to something we do not know yet. It is in this condition that the concept of the citizen would have to be restructured while the lighter, operative and irresponsible concept of user will define the acting role of a lost urban subject. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">I am going too quickly to conclusions; my city is changing rapidly too. It will be a network city and it would not look like a realized utopia. A question that will be important will be analogous to the one concerning the Internet; will the market prescribe the protocols of connectivity in the city or can we think other possible systems of civility, within this given frame? Who will be the subject who would fight for what urban protocols?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">Aristide Antonas</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">Athens</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span>Sent from antonas iPhone</div><div><br>On Mar 18, 2012, at 3:28, simon <<a href="mailto:swht@clear.net.nz">swht@clear.net.nz</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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Dear <<empyreans>>, <span class="gI"><span class="gD">Ana
Valdés, Teddy Cruz, Aristide Antonas,<br>
<br>
</span></span>I am inspired by the discussion to add these
speculations, on the theme of crisis and continuity as much as
resilience and resistance. It occurs to me that time is at issue
here and I have in the following assayed a way of addressing this,
whether timely or not. Forgive its speculative suspension. To go on
at any further length seemed to threaten redundancy as well as
relevance.<br>
<br>
But I hope at least a little of the latter is found here: I would
also ask what the network city might look like? an anatomy of
utopia?<br>
<p>Albert-László Barabási has written two beautiful books dealing
with network theory. It is in the second, however, that what was
only latent in the first becomes clear. It is brought out in three
ways: in this book Barabási shows that he is a writer;<em> Bursts
</em>deals with network effects in time; and where the real world
application of network theory worked by way of analogy in <em>Linked</em>,
in the second, and under the auspices of time, it is the real
world that takes over.</p>
<p>My question is: at the very time that we are most connected, why
is it that we are most isolated?</p>
<p>It is as if they are part of the same problematic, as if the
network connecting us itself provided the anatomy for our
isolation, as for our connection.</p>
<p>It is also as if the very time were part of the problematic and
the question had as much to do with its realism - its adequacy to
reality - as the reality of what is purported and what purports to
be current, present, relevant, even critical: the current
"crisis."</p>
<p>We are caught in a movement between Barabási's two books. From
the analogical real world application of network theory to the
immanence of communicating networks in a real world in time.
Moreover, the intensification of this critical moment, of this
moment of crisis - the intensification of the crisis, then - could
itself be a network effect, in Barabási's words, a burst. That is,
the fact of there being power-nodes operating in a spatialised
network produces a concatenatory effect in time. Time is not
indifferent, but broken or cut by moments of crisis: bursts of
intensity, self-intensifying and self-exacerbating according to
network effects.</p>
<p>The very time, however, is it one of crisis or continuity? How to
judge, when the space-time network is so resilient, has been
engineered to be so resilient, as to withstand, continue and even
thrive in times of crisis!</p>
<p>The crisis of these very times may be prolonged indefinitely,
exactly continuous with and in continuity with the network.</p>
Best,<br>
<br>
Simon Taylor<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.squarewhiteworld.com">www.squarewhiteworld.com</a><br>
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