MOMENTARY MANIFESTO
FOR
PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE

1. DO
   Design by doing is architectural beta-testing. Build 1:1 models in the public domain that function as immediate site analysis, architectural test case and social condenser. Put your practice to theory. Do the unthinkable: build a manifest, write a building.

2. MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL
   People like pretty things.

3. USE NEW OLD MATERIALS
   Celebrate mass consumption. Reveal the beauty of the everyday, by using ordinary objects in a different manner. Look beyond traditional construction materials, and re-introduce old crafts with new fabrics. Create social value from worthless stuff.

4. COOK
   Food is social construction material. It unites people. Cook, drink and dine together. A mere cookie can be the answer to a big brief.

5. CREATE A PUBLIC
   Shakespeare said it: "all the world's a stage". Architects have the world's largest audience. Discover for whom you are designing and respond to the res publica with the proper act. Public architecture is the staging of all events of life, and our tools can be those of performance artists.

6. MIND THE DETAILS
   All details contribute to the architectural atmosphere. If you want people to meet, tie the drinks together and hand them out in pairs. A piece of rope is architecture too.

7. ACT UNSOLICITED
   Reprogram the brief, the building and the profession. Consider re-use of vacant office buildings rather than designing new ones. Use your own office 24/7 and program the space as club at night. Partake in society, rather than architecture competitions.

8. BE PERSONAL
   Establish human relationships. This social construction material is just as important as bricks and mortar. Communicate and educate. Host an excursion and exemplify the unknown. Step onto the street and speak the language of those who will live in your buildings.

9. PUT EVERYONE AROUND ONE TABLE
   Different people have different agendas. Place the client, manager, municipality, resident and neighbour around one table and they will communicate. Everyone is amateur and professional. An amateur can be a true expert at "residing", and a professional client may have no knowledge of architecture. Make the architecture at the table the subject of conversation and catalyst for the process. This creates mutual understanding, and speeds up the design process remarkably.

10. DESIGN THE RULES AND THE GAME
    Arrive early. Architectural decisions are made in the urban planning process. Design this process and ensure a great outcome.

11. PLAY THE CITY
    Play the city, don't plan it. Cities are shifting. Incorporate existing bottom-up initiatives and let these inform the top-down. Design a script rather than a blueprint; be the director. Reserve space for change and celebrate the informal.

12. SHOW THE GENIUS OF THE LOCI
    Reveal the potential of the place by building a temporary building overnight. Hand it over to the public, accompanied by one simple rule: a free stay in exchange for a personal contribution to the building. The qualities will show on site.

13. CONFUSE
    Create architecture that is mutable and open to multiple interpretations. People will discover it and thereby make it their own. Architecture that confronts each person?s imagination creates opportunities for communication between the private and public domain, and between individuals.

14. BE BIASED
    Carry a strong signature and be opinionated. Who wants to listen to someone with no ideas?

15. ABSTAIN FROM AUTHORSHIP
    Celebrate change. See architecture as an open source; a gift in which others are challenged to participate. In order to bring about social relationships through architecture, one has to give up copyright claims.

16. BE THE CURATOR
    Urban renewal is the future. Within extant city layouts, new architecture is about reprogramming; about social planning, temporary events, sports, education, art, and media. Find the right experts in these fields and curate the environment in which they can act together.

17. BE AN URBAN ARCHITECT
    The public domain is the future. Real architectural quality often does not lie in the building, but in the public domain. Design this domain as if you would a facade.

18. BUILD MENTAL MONUMENTS
    There's always a need for places for people to gather. Combine the real with the virtual in pop-up buildings; like an analogue facebook or a physical webforum. Make momentary monuments: one-day events can last a lifetime in the collective memory of the visitor.

19. SMILE
    Enjoy what you do and have fun.

Conseils de développement web

Tout à fait génial pour isoler un programme (et les commentaires parlent de plein d'autre trucs cools)

Péter du GSM avec un SDR

Un shell PHP vraiment bien foutu, pour remplacer C99Shell dans ma trousse à outils :)

PCBs pas cher.

Exposé illustré sur les réseaux de neurones !

Un CPU simple et complètement spécifié.

Société qui fait de la veille : ils font des trucs super intéressants et bien fichus.
Et en plus, on dirait qu'ils recrutent…

Ça a l'air très intéressant, par rapport aux réseaux de neurones.

People ask what the next web will be like, but there won’t be a next web.

The space-based web we currently have will gradually be replaced by a time-based worldstream. It’s already happening, and it all began with the lifestream, a phenomenon that I (with Eric Freeman) predicted in the 1990s and shared in the pages of Wired almost exactly 16 years ago.

This lifestream — a heterogeneous, content-searchable, real-time messaging stream — arrived in the form of blog posts and RSS feeds, Twitter and other chatstreams, and Facebook walls and timelines. Its structure represented a shift beyond the “flatland known as the desktop” (where our interfaces ignored the temporal dimension) towards streams, which flow and can therefore serve as a concrete representation of time.

It’s a bit like moving from a desktop to a magic diary: Picture a diary whose pages turn automatically, tracking your life moment to moment … Until you touch it, and then, the page-turning stops. The diary becomes a sort of reference book: a complete and searchable guide to your life. Put it down, and the pages start turning again.

Today, this diary-like structure is supplanting the spatial one as the dominant paradigm of the cybersphere: All the information on the internet will soon be a time-based structure. In the world of bits, space-based structures are static. Time-based structures are dynamic, always flowing — like time itself.

The web will be history.

Metaphors Have a Profound Effect on Computing

Until now, the web has been space-based, like a magazine stand; we use spatial terms such as “second from the top on the far left” to identify a particular magazine. A diary, on the other hand, is time-based: One dimension of space has been borrowed to represent time, so we use temporal terms like “Thursday’s entry” or “everything from last spring” to identify entries.

Time as a metaphor may seem obvious now. Especially because it’s natural for us to see our lives as stories, organized by time.

Yet it took us more than 20 years in computing to get here. The field has finally moved from conserving resources ingeniously to squandering them creatively. In this new environment, we can focus on the best way — instead of the cheapest, most conservative way — for the internet to work.

And today, the most important function of the internet is to deliver the latest information, to tell us what’s happening right now. That’s why so many time-based structures have emerged in the cybersphere: to satisfy the need for the newest data. Whether tweet or timeline, all are time-ordered streams designed to tell you what’s new.

Of course, we can still browse or search into the past: Time moves forwards and backwards in the cybersphere. Any information object can be added at “now,” and flows steadily backwards — like a twig dropped in a brook — into the past. You can drop files, messages, and conventional websites (those will appear as static, single elements) into the stream, which acts as a content-searchable cloud file system.

But what happens if we merge all those blogs, feeds, chatstreams, and so forth? By adding together every timestream on the net — including the private lifestreams that are just beginning to emerge — into a single flood of data, we get the worldstream: a way to picture the cybersphere as a whole.

No one can see the whole worldstream, because much of the information flowing through it is private. But everyone can see part of it.

Imagine an old-fashioned well with a bucket on a rope, with the bucket plunging deeper and deeper into the well. This well of time is infinitely deep, so the bucket will plunge forever — and the rope is always as long as it needs to be, so there will always be more rope to unwind. (The infinite scrolling we now experience on many timestreamed websites is merely the rope unwinding.) The bucket represents the head or start of the worldstream, the oldest data object. The rope-axle represents now, and the rope (plunging deeper and deeper into the past) is the stream itself.

Instead of today’s static web, information will flow constantly and steadily through the worldstream into the past. So what does it all mean?
Today, the most important function of the internet is to tell us what’s happening right now.
Streams Completely Change the Search Game

Today’s operating systems and browsers — and search models — become obsolete, because people no longer want to be connected to computers or “sites” (they probably never did).

What people really want is to tune in to information. Since many millions of separate lifestreams will exist in the cybersphere soon, our basic software will be the stream-browser: like today’s browsers, but designed to add, subtract, and navigate streams.

Searching content in a time stream is a matter of stream algebra, which is easier than the algebra of space-based structures like today’s web. Add two timestreams and get a third (simply merge the AP news feed and my friend Freeman’s blog streams into time-order); and content search is a matter of stream subtraction (simply subtract all entries that don’t mention “cranberries” to yield all the entries that do). The simple, practical features of stream algebra have one huge benefit: giving us made-to-order information.

Every news source is a lifestream. Stream-browsers will help us tune in to the information we want by implementing a type of custom-coffee blender: We’re offered thousands of different stream “flavors,” we choose the flavors we want, and the blender mixes our streams to order.

Every site’s content is liberated from the confines of space. It becomes part of a universal timestream. Instead of relying on Amazon the site to notify me if there’s a new Cynthia Ozick book or new books on the city of Florence, I can blend together several booksellers’ lifestreams and then apply my search since stream algebra allows any streams to be added (new and used books) and content (Florence, Ozick) to be subtracted.

E-commerce changes drastically. We shouldn’t have to work to find what’s new, yet the way the web is currently architected it’s no different logically than having to visit a thousand separate physical shops. The time-based worldstream lets us sit back instead and watch a single, customized fashion show across sites.
People no longer want to be connected to computers or ‘sites’ (they probably never did).

Worldstreams thus let us blend and tune our information any way we like: My preferred Yale football news, book updates, and shopping recommendations are interspersed with all my email, other messages, posts, documents, calendar notes, and so forth. Think these features already exist in an app somewhere? They don’t. They can’t, not until the millions of different streams each telling their own stories share the same interface for the stream browser to draw on.

Does this sort of precise control limit the serendipitous nature of the web? In a way, yes. But it’s about time: “Bring me what I want” is almost always more useful than “Let me rummage around and see what I can find.” No matter how fast it seems, most search is a waste of time. In a way, we are using time (i.e., the time-based structure) to gain time.

Instead of doing an endless series of separate searches, we tune the knobs on our stream-browser to continuously feed us just the information we need.

This future doesn’t just kill the operating system, browser, and search as we know it — it changes the meaning of “computer” as we know it, too. Whether large or small (e.g., a smartphone), a computer’s main function in the near future will be tuning in to — as a car radio tunes in a broadcast station — the constantly flowing global cyberflow. We won’t care much about the computer devices themselves since we’ll be more focused on the world of information … and our lives as attached to it.

Finally, the web — soon to become the cybersphere — will no longer resemble a chaotic cobweb. It’s already started to happen. Instead, billions of users will spin their own tales, which will merge seamlessly into an ongoing, endless narrative: the earth telling its own story.

D'où l'intérêt de lancer une pièce en cas de choix difficile…

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.