government

wmna on trevor paglen

by

Over at We Make Money Not Art, Regine has a great recap of Trevor Paglen’s research on the black world of CIA-run torture taxis, secret government installations, and classified government projects. Regine writes "His artistic work deliberately blurs the lines between social science, contemporary art, and other more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us." See here.

I brought Trevor to the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design as part of the New Spaces, New Cartographers series I organized when I was Forum president in 2004 and was greatly impressed by the research he did. In an era in which our lives become as transparent as the government becomes opaque, Trevor shows us how we can turn the tables a little.

Read more

how the city works

by

Via archinect comes this New York Times article on how the United Parcel Service eliminates left-hand turns to save money by cutting on gas expenses and time on the road (here is another article on the topic). Compare it with the following Associated Press article from last year on the strange co-existence of parking tickets and delivery trucks.

The world of logistics is much more intricate than we may think. Understanding it better is crucial for the coming century of networked architecture and networked urbanism.

Read more

get used to it

by

In remarks before Congress, Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of the National Security Agency testified that Americans need to get used to government and businesses "safeguarding" their privacy. There was a reason that big business and big government were done away with under post-Fordist restructuring. Such structures were generally inefficient and even corrupt. As post-Fordism shades into network culture, it seems like—driven by the temptations of data mining—they’re back and bringing a whole raft of disturbing developments with them.

Read more