I stared very hard at a car and a market today, and my mind begin to drift away into thinking about how social knowledge/information is embodied by food centres and cars. What does a market embody? It embodies the socio-cultural norms embedded in the neighbourhoods, in the food that it contains, in the items that it sells to the residents. What about cars? Still thinking about it though, but I think I am on to something there. I'm now trying to think of EVERYTHING physical artifact as embodying some kind of social/personal information, but I'm not sure how it might all work out.
What kind of informational flows? I imagine cars to be outfitted with sensors and flexible surfaces so they change the aerodynamic profile given different road, temperature, and air conditions. But thats merely autonomous smart systems, and aren't really paradigm busting. Similarly for buildings - how buildings might self-optimise for energy efficiency - but thats not really new. I don't want to be looking at smart systems, I'm looking for relational, social information, and how they are embodied in the physical artifacts in our lives.
What does a car represent as an artifact of society? How does a 'car' reflect the personalities of the user? Ditto for a market - how does a market/food centre represent the neighbourhood and the people living in it? How people are part of a larger community, incorporating them into their identity, creating this personal mosaic, perhaps...
Now, I admit that many of these things sound rather abstract, but all of these thoughts and ideas come down to this: how do we think of institutions as stores of information, and what can we take out from thinking in this way?
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