Computatonal Intelligence: The Grid as a Post-Human Network

Research and design collaborative EZCT Architecture & Design Research has adopted grid computing to produce a series of furniture systems and other small-scale prototypes using genetic algorithms in combination with automated fabrication technologies. Here, cofounder Philippe Morel relates this design practice to the broader technical and social implications of various grid-computing projects, such as the online organisation Folding@Home, which utilises grid computing and distributed communities for the production and exchange of postindustrial knowledge. He argues that these ‘knowledge farms’ which create an ‘ambient factory’, are perhaps the ultimate form of social-economic production, transforming not only the evolution of design but of the communities that produce and eventually consume its products. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.