Planetology

In order to enter into the design of the behavior of the orbital colony, I’m doing diagrammatic research on the smallest scale of intervention, the human scaffold. The following diagrams view the body as a set of interrelating networks. I am analyzing the health problems connected with extended spaceflight in terms of the body network, and viewing a solution as a supplement to that network.

This network intervention will eventually be double ended, on one end it will interface with the body network to make it viable for space live, and on the other end, it would form a nutritional and political interface with the supply and social networks aboard the orbit ship (a population of around 100-150 people). This second dimension of this smallest interface is yet to be designed, and would be designed based on the needs of the human end.

This investigation of the body and its needs will eventually go on to educate the decision making habits of the orbitships as units within their mezzo-scale swarm network.

This analysis of the body reveals a network of quality, rather than quantity. Relatively static connections change in emphasis, rather than reconnect. The scaffold intervention would be a supplemetary control mechanism that would adjust qualities of connections to ensure health in space.

This is a diagram in progress, and hasn’t been fully produced yet. Below is a pullout diagram of several body network systems, and a hand annotation of unhealthy regions when affected by microgravity.

Video is currently uploading. It will soon be at:

http://youtu.be/CehWxPYDCIo

I’ll upload the primary images from the video here soon, too.

Previously I presented an interest in the design of an orbital platform that would act as something between an industrial town and an airport. I want to present this platform as an interface location, a confluence of information and materials in an exchange amongst locations on Earth, and between the planet and colonies off in space. This site offers much potential, as being an interchange that is simultaneously a static place, yet is always moving relative to the surface, allowing for infinite connections to land and space. It would be a place of great interchange, where many flows must cross and meet, but never slow or end.

So far, the model for adaptable network constructs has always resided within some form of physical framework. As a prime example, Cedric Price’s Fun Palace attempted to be an architecture built of people, adapting and forming to the social space created by the crowds. Unfortunately, this flexibility required a massive structural framework, to move its pieces around. This scaffold limited the size and form of the emergent constructs, and bounded the zone of simulated freedom to the foundation pad. I  cannot imagine the users actually being able to operate the heavy cranes required to move the pieces around with any sense of freedom. In addition, the pieces available for creating spaces were always the same, just repeated and reorganized. The Fun Palace could easily be characterized as very similar system to today’s industrial design culture, where replaceable and interchangeable parts can add variation to the wide, although limited, set of consumption choices. The spatial variations within the Palace could have been generated (accurately simulated) by a static form building designed around a fluid and irregular diagram (such as the Berlin Free University).

My desire to focus my efforts on an earth-orbital space station carries with it some precedents. The adaptable modular design approach is a technique that has been deployed in space flight since the beginning. For example, the first space station put into orbit by the US, Skylab was an adapted module from the Saturn rocket series. The same module, known as the S-IVB, was deployed as the top stage on three different versions of the Saturn rocket series, and with Saturn V, carried the Apollo LEM into space. Three of those same Apollo units, after releasing their cargoes, trailed behind the manned missions to act as deep impact test units, crashing into the surface of the moon to deliver geologic data. Skylab was built from an S-IVB module, and rode atop the last Saturn V rocket into orbit. The International Space Station currently employs a modular unit design, learning from the lessons of its predecessors. The station is composed of around 35 payload units of varying sizes. These units are designed to each have a different function, and to be added to, or replaced to form an architecture that can adapt to future needs. It still exists as a structured unit, much like the Fun Palace, held together and supplied by a scaffold, with a limited amount of resource gathering systems.

This kind of scaffold limitation isn’t uncommon, even in today’s examples of network architecture. Philip Ball describes scale-less networks that can infinitely grow according to their formulae (a notion mirrored by David Reed in his analysis and postulations for viral communication networks). Airports, no matter how interconnected and complex, are still limited by the number of runways. Certain models of networks from graph theory involve power laws to define the average number of connections, and the way that those connections form centers, peripheries, and communities. Unfortunately, this model only typically works when it isn’t applied to physical systems. Internet and communications networks can be modeled this way because they don’t operate within the confines of physical space or resource, but in real life long distance connections are costly and challenging to route, especially when that network is limited to a base plane (Ball uses electrical networks as an example, where shortcuts aren’t feasible, and the network is projected onto the two-dimensional map, limiting it to a more rudimentary grid model).

An advantage of operating in orbit is the lack of a base plane; the network can operate in three dimensions, allowing for more shortcut connections, making the connection diagram more interconnected and more complex. According to the most complex models of social networks from graph theory, scale-free networks have a strong tendency to generate closeness of all nodes through escalation. The notion of the rich getting richer holds true here, where certain network nodes grow to have enormous numbers of connections, while others maintain just a few. Previous attempts to formalize network architecture has not accurately modeled this tendency. Buckminster Fuller’s space frames and connectable units were always encumbered by geometry limiting the number of connections, limiting the network to a relative homogeneity. How can physical entities allow for real connective network richness?

Philip Ball offers a solution for this too. The analysis of swarms and flocks appears on one level to be a separate branch of analysis, but what if it were a model for network reorganization? Networks can be characterized by a relative local lack of intelligence, a reliance on the nearby connections to generate and move information. The same is true in swarms, where each unit follows a surprisingly simple set of behaviors based on the actions of its neighbors. When combined could these corresponding analyses form a network body in constant flux? In this situation, the graph theory diagram may be relatively simplistic due to its physical constraints, but each drawing may only be a snapshot in time. Layering of the diagram, showing the rule set of each participant (according to swarm theory) and the notation of the tendency of the swarm as a group (referencing Stan Allen’s understanding of allographic diagramming of choreography) could define the network not as a drawing of a physical form hanging in space, but could only become static within its non-prescriptive choreography diagrams. Ball’s example of a swarm splitting to clear the way of a predator could correspond to network community variations; units could constantly reorganize into mutually beneficial community groupings, only to dissipate and reorganize again. Ball’s description of the way digital fish swarms make group decisions could have effects on large-scale missions.

This behavior can be seen on multiple scales to create real variation within a living network location. Let me outline a living network space station:

I want to postulate three scales of systems, each emerging as a resultant of a group of units in the smaller scale. The smallest scale would be human: each person equipped with an interface device (not too different from the one outlined in my previous post) that could help facilitate community decision making processes based on swarm logic. Humans, partnered with their individual interface units, would live in community units. These units form the second species. The population inside could vary, but roughly hover around the population of a small town. The medium unit would be a physical container, but would be highly variable in its abilities, as its inhabitants could have the ability to modify it. The behavior of the medium species would be a black-box (“spokesperson” from Bruno Latour Actor Network Theory) representation of the collective attitude of the contained residents. Just as all humans are one species, but vary widely in their roles in the society, so would the medium module vary in its function, attitude, connectivity, and transience based on an aggregate of the contained population. The interface unit for each person could act in a secondary way, allowing an individual to leave a medium module and join a new one if he or she is not content with the community’s decisions. This allows units to change over time, new populations moving in to transform the neighborhood (something seen today in gentrifying  or evolving urban neighborhoods).

The medium units could behave with a wide variety of personalities, this time manifesting in a physical network. The placement of the site as a boundary condition between the planet and the potential for resources coming in from beyond demands that material flows be of great importance to behavior of the medium units. Assume for a moment that a shipment of a raw material might be coming in from space. A swarm community might arise to meet it based on mutual benefit. It could form together into a tightly connected grouping around productivity. Certain units could meet up with the carrier to offer to manufacture the material into something that could be used or sold. Multiple material cargo units might also gravitate to support manufacturing units. Units that may occupy a more service-based part of society could join the cluster to offer supplies, comforts and entertainment to the inhabitants of the tightly grouped units. External flows, like sales of products could form the lesser connections to other community grouping that may form around different functions.

These larger functions are the third and biggest species. When one views a network community as having a singular mission (again a black-boxing of a socially arranged group), one can begin to isolate this group as an entity with connections to other entities. Groupings could arrange as mentioned before to refine raw materials, to exchange services and stocks, or even to collect together with enough supplies and valuable materials to decide to depart the orbital cluster to go out into interplanetary space to bring goods to another cluster.

A crucial part of graph theory in defining networks is the number of connections relative to the number of nodes. Just as the smallest species would be a linking of a human with an interface supplementary unit, the medium unit would demand independent connection units. These units could be unmanned, and called upon when a medium unit wishes to dock. The inclusion of these units as independent objects would be beneficial in three ways. First, moving connection units could control the number of connections available to a population, that would in turn define the shape of the network graph at all given points in time to generate some desired behavior. Limitation of connections could also help prevent epidemic from spreading through an overly-connected network. Second, independent connections would free the medium units from the constraints of geometry in making their connections. A fluid hull membrane could be punctured by connectors in differing numbers and organizations to allow for network variation. Third, a lack of available connections could force members of the swarm to leave, perhaps forcing some units to fly down to the plant to connect with a surface city, thus bringing new individuals and ideas into the swarm system.

When societal constructs are considered as networks, the notion of an interface becomes massively important. Be this between two simple elements within a larger web, or a junction where multiple ordered networks meet, interface links people, materials and information together across disparate organizations. My interest revolves around the architecture of this condition, and when one is asked to live on the boundary.

A recurrent theme is the condition when the inhabited boundary is the border to something powerful, potentially beneficial if controlled, but also dangerous. For a quick historical look, let’s consider the ocean as an example. For much of history, oceanic travel was dangerous, but potentially gainful. Ports of imperialism, trade, and exploration were complex mixes of cultures and materials. Look at the interface on the scale of a city, such as Venice, a city of extreme complexity, and undeniable reliance on the water, that mixes arts and cultures from all sides of the Mediterranean. Viewing oceanic harvesting on another scale, the example of the salt water farm can be raised, as a housing unit that behaves as a network within itself, working with land crops, fish harvests, and economic market pressures to create a complex business that still manages to house a family unit in relative comfort. Even down to the unit of a single fishing boat as an interface object between an individual and the ocean in a very direct and personal manner.

I find the inhabitation of this boundary condition to be massively important. As well as acting as a spime and facilitating important network interactions, an inhabitation unit on a boundary site, as an interface role, lends its residents a combination of universal understanding and sense of place.  Imagine what the culture might be like in such a place.

Deployment of an interface architecture can happen over many resources. Interface architecture could sit on the border with oceans, foreign countries, bodies of natural or scientific resources, commodity supplies, bodies in space like planets and stars, and even more subtle network resources, like cities and their social networks, epidemiological systems, and interface with information networks.

This theme of interface is consistently present in many depictions of the future. Andromeda Strain is perhaps the most literal depiction of an interface architecture. The vast majority of the story explains the logistical and architectural constructs that are set up to handle something so tender as the interface with an alien viral strain. Other stories  heavily rely on the architecture of interface as well: Blindsight carefully explains the custom-built spaceship and specially designated teams and layers of probes called to the task of investigating alien life. The inclusion of the Icharus Array is a secondary depiction of an interface system that connects the human space transport network with the Sun. Solaris looks at the interface between humans and the planetary intelligence in a complex manner. Choosing not to black-box human interest as a singular entity, or even the people sent to Solaris, the story considers the characters as networks, not objects, and plays out the interaction between the planet and the memories available on board the station. Dune can be understood as one big story of interface architecture, dealing closely with the interconnections between the varying groups and the source of power, the spice. The planet becomes the playing field for the vying interests of the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the Emperor, the Atreides and Harkonnen houses, and the resident Fremen. Networks of politics and society intimately intertwine with the intricacies of the planet’s ecosystem, with the vying characters acting as mediums between.

I find contemporary airports to be fascinating models, as they act as links not just between two networks, but many, on many levels, and must maintain order throughout. A large international airport has to handle many layers of information: material (including passenger luggage and the security questions that accompany, commercial shipping that comes with tariffs and governmental controls, and biological control and containment), people (widely varying, including ambassadors, tourists, workers, illegals, spies, terrorists and criminals, employees, and even sometimes residents of the network), and flows of information, ideas and cultures crashing and mingling. Each airport is a gateway to not just one, but hundreds of foreign networks, that can be considered variably beneficial or hostile. Particularly revealing is the ways some individuals and groups manage to use the air network to their advantage, and the amount of regulation and organization each governing body puts into trying to control how things move into their space through this network. Terror organizations can hijack or threaten aircraft based on their destinations and predominant passenger demographic. Governments can use commercial flights to move spies in and out of countries posing as innocents from other countries. Refugees can accidentally or intentionally find themselves in limbo between state regulations (Edward Snowden being an example of recent note). This paints a picture of a network that is complex on many scales, including material, human, biological, political, and cultural, and this layered complexity manifests in airport architectures that are highly layered, segregated, and incomprehensible from a human scale. This complexity presents enormous potential for variation, evolution, and misappropriation in the system. The unfortunate downside of considering the airport as a model is its lack of residents.

Another way to consider this condition of the interface, is the example of the industrial town. Industry could be viewed as an interface with a commodity network, and the people who live and work between the commercial network and the world around can commonly find this experience victimizing. The industrial settlement has been of architectural interest for a very long time, designers drawing on the horrors of Manchester as cause for their radical utopian designs. Fourier, Cadbury, Krupp, Owen, Garnier, Le Corbusier, and others all designed their views of the industrial town. These towns commonly present paradoxes in considering them as interface networks. Early industrial cities commonly paid their workers low wages, such that the workers producing goods were hard pressed to acquire those very goods for themselves. Later approaches to the industrial town introduced a separation between the factory district and the residential district, sidelining the community as a participant in the transaction between the business and the larger society. Considering networks, this could have been an effort to simply avoid the enormous complexity involved in using the designed society as an active social and economic interface.

My issue becomes one of synthesizing the complexity of the airport network-interface model with inhabitation as an active component. A potential design outlet for this architecture could be a place where both housing and transit are necessary, such as a space station acting as a port between an interplanetary transportation and resource gathering network, and the social, material, and political networks on the planet below. This station would require an enormous resident staff population, and  as an extension, could evolve into a new city environment, with the added complexity of the airport’s layered control systems. How can a compact living environment comfortably house people in a social setting, while still operating the systems of control and division that are necessary in an area of exchange, without black-boxing the local society as a side story?

The solution would have to be carried out on multiple scales, each adding layers to the boundary-city diagram. The first obvious scale would be the city itself, placed on the juncture between multiple networks of power and resource. Perhaps a second scale could consider the house (a move exemplified by Tony Garnier, who carefully considered the individual living situation in his urban plans), and the way it connects the societal unit living within to networks of society, information, food and other needs. The last possible scale could be down to the individual; a device or tool that facilitates the interface between that person and information networks (or the Singularity), and other necessities. This scale of interface may want to operate between massively disparate scales, connecting a global information network, with, say something as small within the individual as their bacterial components, or genetic information. Competing networks within the city could be addressed on multiple scales, but viewed as overlapping layers that form the drawing of the interface-city.

In Emergence, Steven Johnson lays out a network order based in the localized knowledge and reaction base of ant colonies. Quite convincingly, he outlines how these systems can relate to human society, where the potential disorder of the city street can cause chance encounter to generate population interaction and global change. The disconnect is in the way that Johnsons (self- admittedly) founds his argument in unaware units – ants with little ability to reflect on their condition. How can we apply this emergent notion to human systems, where the individual is far more aware?

It is fully true that humans can and do operate in unaware manners – mob mentality and groupthink are examples of when the awareness of the individual breaks down and the local reactive network becomes dominant. People involved in violent protest often report sudden changes in attitude of the mob, an emerging willingness for normal people to begin vandalizing, burning, and tormenting the authorities – to begin to break down the normally accepted rules of operation temporarily, only to return to order later as if they were in a dream state. Unfortunately, these situations tend to be destructive, associated with overthrow of good or bad orders. Rarely are mob situations constructive. Why, then would we want to found a system of order in the part of our social mentality that has well-documented destructive habits?

Military history has shown us the failures of local-authority order. The ancient Romans understood the value of command over groupthink. Battle after battle, the Romans sent disciplined ranks against disorganized “barbarians,” and ended up conquering much or Europe. Of course the weak point exists when a poor strategist is in command, but their structure of command and discipline is one that prevailed for thousands of years. Only recently are modern militaries beginning to see the adaptive value of local command.

The question seems to be one of top-down or bottom-up. We have evidence that top-down approaches tend to be incapable of adaptation or evolution, but our examples of bottom-up order are shown to be highly likely to miss the larger picture. The operative word in this discourse is “expertise.” When a mass of untrained individuals engages in some constructive act, we can’t expect trained discipline to emerge. The opposite is true, that a team of laborers working under the supervision of a singular expert can fail to be adaptive, or comprehensively considerate.

What models can we call on to exemplify a combination of authoritarian and mob orders? I’m not sure I can answer this question (anyone who can might be able to make a killing helping the military develop new command structures).

There is another discussion at play here, which is one of the methods of communication. Clearly, a network of living things is formed by communication, but the issue may be quality or quantity. Johnson’s ants communicate very simply, conveying really only one or two things at a time, and the intelligence emerges from the sheet number of incidental communications that occur in a period of time. Humans, on the other hand, communicate in very complex ways, conveying countless points with each interaction.

Is simple quantity a valid intelligent network? Computers use the simplest communication, just a binary positive or negative, and through millions of interactions, achieve something powerful, but is this, like Johnson’s mention of SimCity, a simulation?