Complexity and Contradiction in the Air

In the new issue of Wired, Andrew Blum has an article entitled Air Repair about how consultants at the Mitre Corporation are rethinking the airspace above New York to alleviate congestion in the nation’s most heavily travelled airspace. It was a great delight to read and this is precisely the kind of approach that new infrastructural initiatives will need to take. Not heavy construction or expensive technological retrofit, but rather applying intelligent thinking applied to making the most of out of conditions, hacking and social engineering what we’ve already got. 

It’d be great if there could be some kind of grand science of optimizing existing infrastructure, but I suspect that there’s not going to be. There’ll be some mathematical models, sure, but more than ever, I think we’re living in an age of tactics, not strategies.    

In the new issue of Wired, Andrew Blum has an article entitled Air Repair about how consultants at the Mitre Corporation are rethinking the airspace above New York to alleviate congestion in the nation’s most heavily travelled airspace. It was a great delight to read and this is precisely the kind of approach that new infrastructural initiatives will need to take. Not heavy construction or expensive technological retrofit, but rather applying intelligent thinking applied to making the most of out of conditions, hacking and social engineering what we’ve already got. 

It’d be great if there could be some kind of grand science of optimizing existing infrastructure, but I suspect that there’s not going to be. There’ll be some mathematical models, sure, but more than ever, I think we’re living in an age of tactics, not strategies.    

1 thought on “Complexity and Contradiction in the Air”

Leave a Comment