cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/8863969

Folks who know me closely know that I’m kind of a geek for patterns - I see them in behavior, in housing, in gardens and natural structures, everywhere. They are at play all around us at varying levels of scale, and anyone who’s ever said “oh this again” can hopefully relate.

Christopher Alexander (author along with others of A Pattern Language, The Nature of Order, Notes on the Synthesis of Form), the speaker in this video, has been formative in my understanding of patterns in a way few others have. His approach to design as a conduit for improving the lives of people and the world writ large have been an inspiration.

I want you to forget that he’s talking to a room full of programmers. Some of it is abstract, and heady, but think about the patterns in your lives and how even slight alterations to them can influence the course of things. I’m coming to this talk from the aspect of a gardener, of a nursery owner interested in restoration ecology, of someone who wants each of us to have a closer connection to the natural systems at play. Bring who you are to this, and (hopefully) let it inspire you. I’ll leave you with this quote from the talk (punctuation mine):

"I want you to help me. I want you to realize that the problem of generating living structure is not being handled by architects or planners or developers or construction people now; there is no way that they’re ever going to be able to do that because the methods they use are not capable of it.

The methods that you have at your fingertips and deal with every day in the normal course of events are perfectly designed to do this … if you have the interest, you have the capacity, you have the means… And what I’m proposing here is something a little bit different from that which is a view of programming as the natural genetic infrastructure of a living world which you are capable of creating, managing, making available - and which could then have the result that a living structure - in our towns, houses, workplaces, cities - is an attainable thing. Which it has not been for the last 50 to 100 years.

That is an incredible thing! I realize that you probably think I’m nuts because this is not what I’m supposed to be talking about to you. And you may say, ‘gosh great idea but we’re not interested’ but I do think you are capable of that and I don’t think anybody else is going to do this job.