Summary of April, 2004
Among the topics in April, 2004, were Karl Popper, creativity, genre theory, and urban planning.
I read Karl Popper’s All Life is Problem Solving and posted a few on that:
I wrote an entry titled “Abstract Versus Concrete Creation: The Senses,” about something that had bugged me for a while. Software and text are both creations of the mind, that can’t be appreciated in their entirety: they must both be internalized (read), as opposed to, say, sculptures which can be perceived sensually.
Then I read Peter Bøgh Andersen’s article on genres as self-organizing systems (PDF), and drew a few parallels to Popper and Kuhn. Genre theory is interesting stuff.
I followed up my notes from a Gartner seminar on Enterprise Architecture, in which analyst Massimo Pezzini talked about the city-planning metaphor and the inevitable heterogeneity of large IT environments.
Then I read a very interesting article in Metropolis on Ildefons Cerdá, the 19th-century urban planner responsible for the master plan of Barcelona, Spain.
Also in the April issue of Metropolis was an interesting article on Le Corbusier: “Le Corbusier and Monasteries as Cities.”
Towards the end of the month, I began reading Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City, and I thought about applying the concept of ‘imageability’ on software development.
Finally, a post with thoughts on Nikos Salingaros’s view of deconstructionism, which I found confusing.
Now for the very brief Swedish summary:
- Månaden började med ett aprilskämt som blev så effektivt att jag ett tag trodde på det själv.
- Läste en intressant artikel om haiku i Dagens Nyheter och skrev lite om det.
- Läsningen om stadsplanering omfattade förutom Ildefons Cerdá lite om kinesisk stadsplanering och hutongerna (även en notis om att den äldsta dokumenterade stadsplaneringen utfördes i Kina och tillämpade feng shui-principer).