Darwin Among the Machines

In the mid-19th century, Samuel Butler in his article ‘Darwin among the Machines’ provided a theory for the iterative development of machines over time. Here, London-based architect, theorist, editor and writer Jack Self casts ‘the modern city’ as ‘a multiplex superposition of network infrastructures’, defined by hierarchical systems of information and material exchange. He argues that current informational technologies have the power to conversely hyper-centralise or hyper-localise the city, thus either encouraging disengagement or nurturing engagement with the emergent social practices of the city's inhabitants.     

Learning from the West Coast: Long-Termism and Change – An Interview with Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand has been a key figure in the alternative culture of the US West Coast since the 1960s. The key message in his various publications has been that communities should be enabled to constantly reshape their own environments. In conversation with former Technical Editor of AD Peter Murray , he describes his lifestyle and influences – from the hippy movement, to time working for California Governor Jerry Brown in the 1970s, to writers such as Gregory Bateson, Frank Duffy and Christopher Alexander – and advocates a loose-fit ‘architecture of systems’, rather than a fixed and limiting ‘architecture of moulds’.