the next

Yesterday after an intense two-hour meeting at one of the ivory towers of the swiss-academic-construct, my colleague and I were having a discussion about our roles in the present project. To us, it is clear that we are the architects, and that those commissioning the work are the building’s owners. It is a nice metaphor to make the very abstract nature of our work concrete.
It now occurs to me that I have on occasions described my dream job as that of a being a “social architect” and have on other occasions mused about the term in rather different contexts than how it is more commonly used. Whatever one makes out of this, what is certain is that the area of Knowledge Ownership remains a very active one for my own explorations.

Back to the drawing board the creative director *wannabe* social architect goes.

On October 14, 2006 I posted this elsewhere:

It is Saturday morning, and of all things, I am blogging and ironing a few pieces of clothing that have sat around for weeks - two of those weeks I was not even here - and that I do want to wear again. In my new remodelled life I did away with the help, have a much smaller dwelling and do all housework myself. I thought that I would never confess to such homeliness, but then, this is the life of a starving, writing artist with a fancy advanced university degree hanging unhung and mostly unused.

Since I have never quite owned a television although I have on occasions borrowed one, when I do housework I do turn on the mac - the most expensive furnishing in my place - and pop up iTunes and listen to something or other for a bit of added distraction from what is a rather tedious task, but not only. I also tend to take breaks from the ironing board and do geeky stuff like fidling with the HTML on my blog template, or glance at my agreggator and see what on earthly news I have once more missed by living a shelterd and selectively connected life.

Today I found a post by Joi Ito on his main blog - sorry, I am too freaking lazy at this point to insert a link to his post and if you do not know who he is and where his main blog can be found, you should. In addition you should be able to to find it without a freaking link to either google, “live search” or  clusty -  and that post of his does point here to Vox. His post invited comments, and I, feeling like that addressed me personally had to write my two bits of comment on his blog.

What gets me thinking is this thing about all the blog platforms and what social software is all about is the diversity and plurality of platforms available. I have on occasions been referred to as a social software consultant, however I feel too ill qualified for the job, so I prefer to call myself, among othe things, an occasional social software consultant as I do on occasions speak publicly about it or give lectures. Like in just about any area in my life, I learn by doing, and so it is with blogging and social software; the latter term being one that I am still uneasy as to how it can be defined and mean something significant.  No, I have not figured this all out yet either.

My present understanding of the blogging and social software landscape comes from comparing it to one of my great loves, architecture. If there is one thing that I will always kick myself for not having done is that I did not become an architect, but given that the lesser evil was that I became a physicist, that is not a tragedy. Yet, that eye and passion for building the concrete and with concrete remains. Certainly an odd passion for somebody so involved with what many in the concrete world consider virtual. So, how is social software and architecture related?

Take my place here in Berne. It is small, miniscule and it caters to all my needs in a minimal and sufficient way: it is 35 sq. metres of efficient living space - living means also working - and it has one super luxurious shower, a garden and fantastic neighbours. When I look at it, it is an artists’ colony including great sculptures in the front yard created by one of the residents. I do not spend all my time here, I do travel quite a bit. I also spend a lot of time in the Algarve, Portugal in a 2-bedroom apartment in a fishing village. While I am always challenged when I get guests that would not be confortable sharing such a small space with me in Berne, I am always quite at ease invinting my friends to come down to the Algarve. This is the limited optic of my own spaces: different spaces, different social interactions, different relationships. Expand this view to how buildings are conceived and it does not take an architecture theorist to realize that different spaces are conceived or created with different functionalities and purpose in mind. So it is with social software. Vox to me has features that make it rather homey and cozy, while blogger is for me a very public space; wikis are updatable on-line books. You get the idea, don’t you?

Back to ironing.

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