[ox-en] Re: Franz Nahrada * A Pattern Language Of The Postindustrial Society

Hi Franz and all!

Some comments.

7 minutes ago Stefan Merten wrote:
> Alexanders approach, though ontologically similar, is radically
> different in its perspective. Rather than focussing on the dynamics of
> constant change, he rather asks what is recurring and what is stable.
> He reserves the term pattern to structures that prove as timeless,
> because they have an inherent quality of enhancing and supporting a
> wide range of activities.

In fact that is a feature of (design) patterns which I know also from
software architecture where design patterns today play a major role.
However, from this definition you can't define patterns in advance but
can only observe them and define them as some sort of best practices.

More theoretically speaking I think (design) patterns are just another
name for a certain type of abstractions. In fact some people may seem
to recognize the concept of abstractions by learning about (design)
patterns. I'd see this less as a strength of (design) patterns and
more as a lack of scientific education, though...

In fact it's difficult to find abstractions / patterns and you really
need to be an expert on the subject with lots of experience. In
particular you need to distinguish carefully the *content* of a
pattern with the pattern itself.

> The idea
> that you love a physical person in a highly exclusive way - like you
> love God - was brought up by the medieval renaissance.

I'd agree that this is a major shift. But isn't this better described
as a paradigm shift than as a new pattern? From the pattern "love" I'd
say this is not a new pattern because the pattern is the same and only
the content is changed.

> Take for
> example the permaculture movement. Permaculture is revolutionizing our
> relation with the biological environment, because nature is not any
> more considered an object of human labor and control, but rather as a
> self-organizing system in a way very similar to design patterns: doing
> almost all of the work and maintaining itself, if arranged properly.

But "arranging things properly" *is* perfect control - isn't it? So
I'd not say that this is a new pattern in this respect. It's a new way
of doing agriculture, yes, but the agriculture pattern is kept.

> It is probably no incident that this special view of nature has
> emerged simultaneously with the use of cybernetics and modern
> information theory.

Sure this is not by chance. The romantic view of nature is the
counter-movement to more and more technology. However, it is in many
ways a backward oriented movement dreaming of a view of nature which
never was reality - not even before the romantic era which all
invented this paradigm of seeing nature.

> In a way and even with a certain degree of justification, the market
> system could be considered as a first attempt to enact such autonomous
> behaviour of subsystems

Yes. Markets are perfect examples of autonomous agents interacting
which each other without central control.

> The information that is
> conveyed by money is almost zero and necessarily overshadowed by
> inherent bias.

True. One reason is the abstraction money represents. Money abstracts
From nearly everything - but this makes things comparable and this is
a precondition for complex markets.

> So some might still work on a pattern of informed and informing money,
> but in fact the Internet by its very existence indicates the ability
> of much more precise information transfer between autonomous
> subsystems.

If you communicate measures of things then it is really misleading to
call this money.


						Grüße

						Stefan

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