It would appear that a lack of thought about human interaction and dynamics, whether among few or many, is responsible for many unforeseen failures.
Selma ----- Original Message ----- From: "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 5:11 PM Subject: Re: Privatizing the Public: Whose agenda? At What Cost? > > On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Selma Singer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >I find the whole idea of using technological tools to help devise better > >social structure, very, very exciting. As long as the techology is seen > >as a TOOL for human purposes, that is. > > > >Why would it not be possible to feed a computer the kinds of outcomes one > >would want to see and what characteristics the behavior would exhibit and > >have the computer HELP us think about that. I'm not saying the computer > >would necessarily be able to devise those structures but it very well may > >be able to help us in our thinking about the strategies we would need to > >employ, especially in getting from where we are now to where we might > >want to be. > > In this case, the computer is simply used to model the society, basically > by modelling the actions of very large numbers of individual agents > representing different sorts of individuals, the advantage being > that modern computers are capable of running such models quickly, > thus allowing engineers to see the results of their work quickly, > and adapt it accordingly. It is the engineers who spec the desired > outcome, and design the system to meet it, and evaluate its efficacy > from the result of the simulation. This kind of computation-intensive > modelling has recently become practical at the desktop level, due to > the continuing advances in hardware. > > >The question of how much energy was given to the social arrangements of > >such societies is a very interesting one. > > > >Weren't there some reports about the biosphere in that regard? Didn't > >they have to cut the experiment short for reasons having to do with human > >relationships or was it health issues? I don't remember. > > The "Biosphere II" experiment suffered from a basic lack of communication > between the ecologists and the civil engineers, compounded by deadline > constraints. The facility was built rapidly and put into use almost > immediately, with a sealed ecology calculated to be self sustaining > for int human inhabitants. The problem was the whole structure was > based on a concrete platform, and as any good civil engineer should > have known, concrete takes between six months and two years to cure, > the rate being dependent on humidity, as water vapour is involved > in the reaction. During this time, the concrete evolves massive amounts > of CO2, far more than the ecologists had designed for. Being built > in a relatively arid climate, the foundation should have been left > to sit for a couple of years before construction proceded. > > At any rate, the population of the B-II building was hardly large > enough for any thought to need have been given to socio-economic > dynamics. My search for discussions of such issues among space > colony enthusiasts has so far turned up nothing useful, but I > continue to pursue it. The one person who seems to have thought about > it seriously, Robert Zubrin, came to the facile conclusion that it > could never be done successfully, and therefore energies should be > directed toward colonizing Mars, where the existence of a raw frontier > beyond the colony would allow room for expansion, and thus a simple > 19th century american frontier capitalism model could be used. > > > -Pete Vincent >
