Friday, September 07, 2007

Futurism Revisited

:: excerpt: bfi challenge, 2007 ::
In my view, the institution we need to be subclassing the most is the Hospital, but at many different levels.

This may sound different from my Global University metaphor, but remember that many caregiving centers are just as much schools.

Disaster zone tent cities suggest one design pattern.

Semi-permanent refugee camps in need of more bandwidth would be another.

With better engineering, we're able to make both scenarios more livable, as well as more rapidly deployable.

Plus we have other forms of Hospital, more like resort hotels.

People travel among them, to and from other walks of life, as both providers and recipients of vital services.

In many a program, the palette motif suggests drag and droppable resources, such as landscape features, utilities, building types (e.g. Sim City). The user slides these objects onto a terrain.

From an historical standpoint, it's interesting to go back into the archives to find out which engineering firms were most forward looking in this regard. These would be some of the same brands we remember most fondly to this day.