wlp on form partII
so the other day i was stuck in crazy traffic, so crazy i have decided never to drive again, only to take the train. i'm actually kinda glad that all the people going to town don't take the train (or i will be squashed inside). for some reason so many people are going to town on sunday evenings.
so as i was sitting there in that crazy traffic i thought, what can id o for entertainment? so i called Ninad, who was stuck in traffic in the other direction, probably on my right, but i couln't see him, and we were talking about making metrologue fuction within the parameters of our crazy overworked underpayed lives.
and what we were thinking is that if we could just begin to publish all the data we have collected, method and direction will emerge, but lets structure and publish it as data. I am not proposing that we work each for her own, but at some point the only way this thing will move anywhere is through individual resposibility for collective purpose. i cannot be the only one writing here, and all these thoughts have emerged from discussion, so it would be stupid of me to call any of this thought 'individual'.
we shall meet on sunday.
wlp on housing
I was talking to Makrand the other day, and Sonal today and of course I ended up with more question than answers and I thought I’de put out my questions.
The first thing I wasn’t sure of was the idea of efficiency. I have always imagined efficiency as a requirement, but I have noticed that sometimes efficiency can become the ideology. When efficiency is the ideology used to design and plan space, then data becomes the language. Two things. The first: Data should be a tool, not an ideology. Secondly: I am not fluent in the language of data, how then do I speak, and how would one create, read and use data?
The efficiency model has time and again been broken because efficiency itself is an extremely gendered/ biased/ directional planning method.
What models of efficiency are we meant to consider when thinking about housing? How is the idea of efficiency countered by image/aspiration/power when cities are formed. How has the model of planned efficiency been resisted through the means of citizens groups, housing societies, politicians and the media and consequent aspirations?
But my most important question: How do we as researchers counter data? I drown when people throw data at me.
wlp on form
I opine that form can be generated over time. Let us speak and we will be forced to resolve form. I think that the form needs to be really simple, it needs to be constructed such that many people can speak given that they are not able to devote too much time to talking every week.
The form needs to be able to amalgamate many people into its fold without too much managerial work. People should be able to speak within the space that we created without asking us. And then if we see relevance in their opinion, we can include them into our fold. The form needs to be structured so it can change and grow with time. In time it needs to make money.
The most essential thing is that the form should take into account our schedules. Otherwise nothing will work.
The only other thing is that it needs a hard copy archive. I think we know enough software, and can learn what we don’t know, to begin an archive.
This is a brief text on some things that i think are essential. Don't want to say too much. More later.
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.
some links about and around socialism
I'm sorry i'm putting this up as a post, it should be a comment to prasad's post. the problem is that the links leep wrapping so they don't work.
I have put together a very quick list of blog entries and articles that I found dealing with socialism. I ran a google search on some blogs that i frequent and I found some articles. This list isn’t the best I’ve seen but it’s the tip of an iceberg that I’m sure you will encounter while browsing.
Walter Williams writes 'socialism is evil' he makes the argument that socialism amounts to legal theft.
Ravikiran crtiques some rhetorical defenses that he hears about Nehru on Anarcaplib over here.
Yazad, on AnarCap Lib quotes Leon Leuw who says socialism is the best strategy to create poverty.
This is the last link. Don Bodreaux at Cafe Hayek hopes that price regulation is not used to tide over the disaster of the tsunamis in sri lanka and indonesia.
I also wanted to add the swaminomics article about nehruvian socialism told through Tata and Mittal, 'Putting Nehru, Tata to Shame'
Here are some more blogs that although i haven't reffered to, usually say interesting things:
The Examined Life
Varnam
Samizdata.net
hard work happened, but lets get on with it..
Hard Work Happening, we'll put more photos up later. 
I'm not sure of final form?????
Metrologue-ing
hello all. i just wanted to tell you what i thought about yesterdays discussion. as much as i completely agree that its a great way to enter, youknow to take on the roles and see their interests and their working space, it has the problem of being slightly academic. in the sense that the political undertones, the ones that make sure that sra projects connected to certain parties get pushed ahead or the politics involved in getting the co-op society to sign the papers is completely unrepresented. i think this is a wgood way to understand the stakes, but we need a more data based study to publish. actually i'm not completely sure, what say you?
Editorial Draft
(forgive me for babbling towards the end, very tired and sleepy)
Metrologue
Editorial 3rd attempt
Metrologue is made up of?
a] young urban researchers
b] Spent the past few years in academic space
c] attempting to create practice
d] attempting to reimagine practice through academic space
e]
f]
Academic Space
a] advantage of being slightly insular, no client
b] ability to bring together many different interest groups on a seemingly neutral platform (how to say this without seeming naively un-knowing about the fact that universities or colleges are no more interest free and maybe never were)
c] can look at systems and methods in isolation from (?)
d] might lose touch with quick changing situations
e] has some amount of connectivity to situations in different contexts (global)
f] might not be able to see the problems of a certain system because it cannot see the powers and interests of the actors of the system
g]
h]
I]
Practice
a] works with interest parties.
b] actors with the power to control the situation usually dominate contested spaces
c] control implies knowledge and/or money
d]
e]
f]
role of metrologue
???
Talking about the City
1] the city can be imagined as one complete organism within itself, a balance of many systems
2]the city as a set of relationships
3]the city as a group of people contesting for resources
4]the city then becomes what we imagine it to be and our interventions are about that imagination.
metrologue is about the different imaginations that the different groups of people have of the city.
metrologue understands the act of writing as an act of intervention
it realises that there are many many many different forces that shape the city, it may be the bureaucratic frameworks, that produce SRA, it may be the act of newswriting in the city, it may be the films that are based on the city, it may be the changing economies, or the imaginations of public space.
please feel free to add what it could be.
