Ripe Axioms
summary
Design axioms like form follows function and you are not your user cause brittle, endless innovation; the alternative is Alexander’s order-first approach plus Jeffrey West’s math showing human systems scale superlinearly (doubling yields ~15% more output and eventual collapse) while nature scales sublinearly (doubling uses ~25% less resource). Tools mentioned: Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards and Alexander’s Nature of Order. Concrete build: a Julian Street shelter finished with 4,500 hand glazed tiles that sustains beauty over time and resists decay.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Start
- 7:28Finite Time Singularity
- 10:07The Cartesian Model of Space
- 10:28What Is a Cosmology
- 15:06How Do We Get Unstuck from these Patterns
- 16:53Design Success
- 19:32You Are Not Your User
- 21:30Form Follows Function
- 25:24Alternate Paradigm
- 25:35Information Architecture of the Opposite Paradigm
- 34:16What Happens to Metal Filings in the Presence of a Magnet
- 36:21The Grateful Dead
- 37:32What Would It Be like To Live in a Mental World
