Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/ en-us Design Observer Group 2011-01-25T15:56:25-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
Fracture Critical as a mode of analysis provides an immediately applicable approach to identifying infrastructural and societal weaknesses with the intent of remedying. In the course of analysis the weaknesses discovered will inform the solutions. The fear that is potentially seen in the above article and the forthcoming book by Fisher is that when this mode of thought is applied to not just our built environment but to our civic organizations whose values these buildings and infrastructure emote, there is a necessary choice presented: either you turn a blind eye as our values and -scapes crumble or one bravely faces the notions that we are all participant in a catastrophic belief system that assumes the world has limitless resources which can be arbitrarily valued and distributed in a trickle down manner and that this is somehow good, right and never ending.

If we do manage to take a collective step backward from the abyss and design a place from which we can ponder what could have been had we not, ideas and tools such as that given by Fischer will be seen as being the intellectual tools of our own salvation. And the method by which we began to redeem ourselves to the biomes on which we depend. So please, Thomas Fisher, apply your Fracture Critical analysis to any field you can conceive of. I will. ]]> Christopher Tallman http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/#comments 2011-01-25T15:56:25-05:00 tim http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/#comments 2010-05-28T00:13:14-05:00 Bo Hauser http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/#comments 2010-01-21T14:01:25-05:00
http://www.chichilnisky.com/

Much of her work has centered on "endogenous uncertainty", which is the risk that is assumed by systems when each individual player seeks to minimize their own risk by pooling it. In many cases, each player is unaware of the risk - or even the nature of the risk to the entire market. Fascinating stuff.

For my own part, I try to write a more popularized version of this line of thought because I believe that this is very important. We need to have broader public discussions of this concept and problem because it is, ultimately, the political problem of our time - and it's hard to call ourselves a Democracy if something this important doesn't define our debate.

I'd like to offer this series of posts I call "Systemic Connections", listed here from conclusion to intro (sadly) as my attempt to explain how this problem is at the heart of how we live today:

http://erikhare.wordpress.com/category/people-culture/systemic-connections/

Thank you for this post and this topic. I hope it is well and widely received.]]> Erik Hare http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/#comments 2009-12-23T11:25:44-05:00
Well done.

]]> Colin Oglesbay http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/#comments 2009-10-28T11:13:00-05:00
It concerns me how often the guiding principles of a system, in this case efficiency, turn out to be the wrong choice entirely. What frightens me more is how often people attempt to solve a problem with the exact mindset that started it. The industrial revolution began because mechanized processes offered a more efficient means of production. Now that, a hundred years later, we have finally begun to realize the danger of the pollution such a system produces, what do we get? More fuel-efficient cars.

Efficiency has been the name of the game for a while and is a principle that seems to have been embraced widely by the modern world. That we now must return to redundancy lest the whole system crash down on us suggests to me that we've never really understood the system at all. And that's scary.]]> Chris Roy http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/#comments 2009-10-28T01:39:28-05:00
Great piece. Brings a lot of disparate events, trends, and professional developments together concisely.]]> faslanyc http://places.designobserver.com/feature/fracture-critical/11477/#comments 2009-10-26T13:08:32-05:00