Reading: Manuel De Landa- 1000 Years of Non-linear History
Please read Manuel de Landa’s 1000 Years of Non-Linear History
(Manuel was a teach of mine at Columbia for two amazing classes) You can find him on Youtube. Self-proclaimed hacker and philospher. Genius.
“…we need to know its history to understand it’s dynamic state”.
I loved this tiny sliver from the reading so much because I felt like it was really applicable to politics, as well as design. With the current U.S. updates that seem to be pouring in daily from the Bad News Bears, I think it stresses even more how important it is for history to inform science, and science to inform history. As designers it is also our job to see the full picture, without it we are doing everything and everyone we touch a huge disservice. I enjoyed the way de Landa broke down record categorically as well, with Geological, Biological (organic), and linguistic. History comes in many form, and facts are never certain.
This reading is a great reminder of the complexity of interactions that comprise a system. To think that by adding up the components of a system to analyze its entirety will only fail to capture the intricacies present.