APL Reading Group Mtg #1 - 10 December 2016 Present: Lukas, Sam, Brendan, Amardeep, Carolyn, Carly, Melanie, Zachary, Ed, Francis (LA / Bay Area / New York / Seattle)

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Notes

Intros, reasons why we want to read the book. - General interest in application to systems, taxonomies. - Thinking about meeting about every other week. About 100 pages per session. - One reader leads each week as an opportunity to factor it through their interests.

What part of the book are outdated? Not relevant any more? - Dense farming? - Utopian creating of cities rather than reforming what we have? - Manmade food processes not yet developed?

A bit of contradiction present. The book is against sprawl, but also interested in a far-reaching spread of development.

Treat this book as a hypothesis… all in metaphor.

Did the 4th book (re: political applications) ever come out? The Oregon Experiment has some real implementation details.

Are we reading this with a critical lens? Can we bring this into “how to use” in 2017?

It almost reads as [software] documentation. Justification of patterns, explanations of dependencies. How to write with enough abstraction but also readability? “Poetry”

Can we see the carrying capacities discussed in the book (i.e. “on being the right size”) in institutions around us? - Big Tech Companies etc… - USA is too big. - “Bio-Regionalism” - boundaries based off natural edges (mountain ranges, plateaus, rivers) - What about city-states? “Sanctuary Cities” as self-contained ecosystems.

“Good”/“Bad” in the book based around individual & group happiness. But the world is based around money to drive change.

Intricacies of use of public space; NYC building lobbies as legislated public spaces.

“Internet structural patterns” - Can we paint internet analogues to many of these patterns? - Platforms as cities? - Platforms as regions? - Countryside as ability to do independent digital homesteading? - ref ecosystems like reddit—large subreddits with connections to communities elsewhere online.

How far can we extend metaphors?

The Urban-Rural IRL information ecosystems — how do they relate to internet information ecosystems? Is there “travel time” online (via search or throttling)

What tools do we have to educate ourselves and “the other” of each other? Can it be done by choice? Should it? “Confrontation Engine”

Does “onboarding” to infrastructural platforms matter? Real world examples: don’t pee in the pool, obey traffic laws. Would a ruleset for netizens be necessary?