A Pattern Language - Matt Wood

that uh that are existing here i just want to say first i i said hello yesterday here on the stage um i'm brand new to all of this i started did an nft launch in november and it's been this whirlwind of three months of craziness and i have to say uh i i heard even about this conference on monday and my partner at ample had encouraged me to come and the first night alone it was immediately obvious the uh it was immediately obvious the the energy and the excitement of folks who are eager to create and also um redefine some of the you know some of the normal things that will that that we're used to today into a better future um so i'm representing ample we are a uh we are a web 3 company focusing on licensing and ownership for independent films and music and uh i think one of the things that that that i've been most inspired by the watching the activity in the past year has been this um this increase in activity from creators and i know so much has been focused on on visual arts and there are there are a lot of projects that are focused on music i feel that they're just like the uh there's a growing extension and we'll eventually get to films we want to be able to solve some of the problems that uh that independent filmmakers have today with financing i'm sure all of you know music festival i'm sorry uh film festivals often exist not only to kind of show that works but also get and bring together investors and film financers and filmmakers and we want to kind of solve that you can read more about the platform and i'd be happy to chat more about what we're aiming to do but this talk is not about that uh this talk is about this book i just want to get a raise of hand if anyone has has seen or read or is familiar with this book the pattern language i'm getting an ooh anybody else look great uh and i also wanted to break up the format as well so this book as far as i understand it because it is extremely dense i was published in the 70s in berkeley by christopher alexander and many others i would encourage you to uh to to check it out on on probably the book i think was would be the easiest way to consume it because it is very very dense but it is essentially a collection of patterns components and and learnings from observing you know human behavior in cities and organizations and towns over the over the span of human history and trying to look for patterns and trying to codify those patterns i first heard about this book because it was it was told to me that when the organizers of uh both burning man and some of the early festivals in the 90s and other large you know 70 000 80 000 for person festivals were happening they were using this book as kind of a blueprint on how to develop these little week-long or two-week week-long cities that would exist and exist in a way that that encouraged you know the best of humanity the book is also popular with object-oriented programmers it is a kind of a guide to organize you know you actual logic and some of the the code structures and what i'd like to do today is use this as a metaphor for daos i think there are and it will you'll i think my my theory is is that if we read through some of these passages within a lens towards growing communities and initiating these kind of human interactions for a better society that we'll be able to kind of use this hopefully in the future as a kind of a starting point as we as we build out communities so just to kick things off sorry let me read some of these passages let's see if we can get well let me read first the introduction hopefully this will make sense just so we understand exactly what what context i'm talking about here it has shown the towns and buildings will not be able to become alive unless they are made by all the people in the society and unless these people share common pattern language within to make these these buildings and unless the common pattern language is itself alive you can use it to design a pattern for yourself or for your family or with the other people to design an office or workspace and you can use it to guide your actual process of construction the patterns are ordered and there are more or less 260 of them in here more of four or five pages each they're ordered in in a sequence beginning with the very largest all the way down to the actual decorations of a home for example you'll find that patterns and then they go off to list some of this as a one example of this patterns of accessible green pattern number 60 is connected first to a certain larger pattern subculture boundary number 13. identifiable neighborhood number 14 work community number 41 and quiet backs these appear on its first page it's also connected to a number of smaller patterns no pattern is is an isolated entity each pattern for these communities can exist in the world only to the extent that is supposed that it is supported by the other patterns and the larger patterns in which it is embedded so i want to just give uh i just want to kick it off there's like i said there's 260 of them but i just want to do four or five and like i said use this as a metaphor for dowels uh i don't want to read it i'd like to ask a volunteer to come up and read it there's just two paragraphs every chapter or every pattern has a problem statement two or three pages giving background about the problem statement and then a clear and concise um you know instructions on how to implement how to fix that as a problem that we have in society and if you're starting to connect the dots i'm hoping i'm hoping you can see that this could like i said be a guidebook as we as we start to build some of these communities so can i have a volunteer to read the very first pattern the very first pattern is actually called independent regions very short just don't be timid please yeah please that'd be great yep absolutely so here is the problem and then the solution is they're both in bold problem at the beginning and then the solution at the end metropolitan regions will not come to balance until each one is small and autonomous enough to be an independent sphere of culture great i'll read the solution two pages later and you'll see they all follow this exact same format wherever possible work toward the evolution of independent regions in the world each with a population between 2 and 10 million each with its own natural and geographic boundaries each with its own economy each one autonomous and self-governing each with a seat in a world government without in the intervening power of larger states or countries fantastic great so this is the very first pattern this is a this as i mentioned was the very first pattern and was the largest right of of the many that that uh of all the patterns that exist and it gives this idea of this ambiguous number eight to ten million people that's obviously for a city at a physical location but again looking at this pro as a metaphor for dao's and the globe and the entire global community what can what could we possibly infer or what could be inspiration for how we define the limits of a particular dow the next one agricultural valleys this is four number four if anyone else would like to come up with another volunteer again problem and then the solution the land which is best for agriculture happens to be best for building two but it is limited and once destroyed it cannot be regained for centuries preserve all agricultural valleys as farmland and protect this land from any development which would destroy or lock up the unique fertility of the soil and we get the graphic up so you can see it this is agricultural valleys again uh preserve all agricultural valleys and farmlands to protect this land from any development true to the story the unique fertility of the soil again again this this talk was scheduled at 4 20 so so just humor me for a little bit if we dive into more theoretical things but i want you to again put on the lens of the metaphor of a dow what could possibly be the interpretation of a valley which is perfect for crops in the hills which are better for living and residential and rests does anyone have any ideas or any thoughts something he said uh something you monetize versus something you build a community around that's exactly right and i think one of the warnings that it says the problem is that that fertile land is also wonderful to build on but it's a one-time you you mess up that land and you'll have centuries to wait until that land's uh able to be used again again a metaphor for daos i just want you to think a little deeper in terms of what some of these meanings might mean there's another one let me skip actually to magic of the city pattern 10. do i have a volunteer anyone running wanted to yes and if i wouldn't if anyone else would like to read some of these subsequent patterns if you want to come up here is the problem and then the solution is going to be right there there are few people who do not enjoy the magic of a great city but urban sprawl takes it away from everyone except the few who are lucky enough or rich enough to live close to the largest centers put the magic of the city within reach of everyone in the metropolitan area do this by means of collective regional policies which restrict the growth of downtown areas so strongly that no one downtown can grow to serve more than 300 000 people with this population base the downtowns will be between two and nine miles apart perfect again it gets thank you it gets into the specifics of uh some of the quantities and some of the scale but it's talking specifically about the magic of the city and the access and the ability to for every community of that organization to access those rare points that actually have the most concentration of of of of of significance um let me throw the question back out to again to the audience again this is talking about towns and cities but with a metaphor of daos anyone have any idea of what we're talking about when we say things like magic of the city and inequality please as loud as you possibly can great he said adele should be specialized and focus on one topic and instead of trying to be all things and all things for all people um i'm actually gonna jump around again because there's another uh there is another pattern related to this that i think actually makes more sense let me flip it back do i have another volunteer anyone bueller okay i'll read it the problem solution this one is the mosaic of subcultures i loved this one let's get the graphic up here give that stuff away the homogeneous and undifferentiated character of modern cities kills all variety of life styles and arrests the gross of individual character again i just moved from new york city so i find this offensive however they make a very good argument in in saying that by not having the or by having the confusion of such a variety at all time at all wakes of life at every hour of the day actually damages the soul instead of giving it the opportunity to concentrate on a very specific aspect of growth and and become and become a strong person the solution here therefore do everything possible to enrich the cultures and the cultures of the city by breaking the city as far as possible into a vast mosaic of small and different subcultures each with its own spatial territory and each with the power to create its own distinct lifestyle make sure that the subcultures are small small enough so that they so that each person has access to the full variety of lifestyles in the subculture near his own again with a dow lens any idea of what that could possibly mean and especially as we're dealing with things like discord groups and and and and uh and telegram um group chats any ideas of subcultures and what that what that could mean in in the context of a dao the answer was uh when there's too much happening in a discord and sometimes it's even when discord goes down yeah i think one of the that's great and when you do look at all the channels you are getting all that noise it's near impossible to to solidify on a single idea and give it the the air in the water that it actually needs for that idea to grow um and let me just do a couple more and then share a little bit more about ample uh the next one about communities of seven thousand again this is kind of being very specific in terms of quantities but i do want to get a little bit idea of of how this might relate to dials the problem statement individuals have no effective voice in a community of more than five to ten thousand persons therefore decentralized city governments in a way that gives local control to communities of five five thousand to ten thousand persons as nearly as possible use natural geographic and historical boundaries to mark these communities give each community the power to initiate decide and execute the affairs that concern it closely land use housing maintenance streets parks police schooling welfare neighborhood services this one i also like a lot um and in the context of a dao and specifically uh riffing off david's comments about ownership which i think is crucial there is this question of size and which and how large daos should be or how large they can be and i think what's the takeaway from this and a few of the other previous patterns is you start to get a sense of how large communities can be or how how large they have been in nature up until this point uh before people begin to feel uh alienated from their their uh representatives so they propose basically that if if you have a if you have a community of five to ten thousand that is enough that they are essentially self-sufficient uh whether or not that exact you know that same number translates online is to is to be decided but i but the real reason of sharing these is that i want these to hopefully inspire us to ask if there are analogs in this world that we're creating can we use this research and patterns like this to begin to experiment and test some of these theories things like when do at what size do we do we see more creation happening in a certain tao uh how many individuals can actually own uh something before they feel like they're just there it's just a it's just a a trinket rather than a valued item in their possession um this last one i'll end with is the network of learning number 18. and i thought this one was impactful and and one i have not yet seen uh it's basically talking about well let me read the problem statement in a society which emphasizes teaching children and students and adults become passive and unable to think for them and act for themselves creative active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of emphasizing teaching solution therefore instead of the lockstep of compulsory schooling in a fixed place work in a piecemeal way to decentralize the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the city workshop teachers at home or walking through the city professionals willing to take on young children as helpers older children teaching younger children museums youth group traveling scholarly seminars conceive of all of these situations as forming the backbone of the learning process for the for those in the city survey all of the situations describe them and then publish them as the city's curriculum let students children and families and neighborhoods decide for themselves and weave together for themselves the situations that comprise their school paying as they go with standard vouchers raised by community tax build new educational facilities in ways which extend and enrich this network i'm going to end there but uh i when i read that statement again this was audiobooks i was driving from salt lake city i couldn't help but think that they're um that this idea of creating online communities like we've seen i'm sure we've all taken and joined if you're a builder for sure taken some of these um kind of online either boot camps or online courses where you've con where you've met with others but this idea of learning from those who you live with is something profound i've always felt that you know sitting in a lecture and having to then take a test and just you know make sure that you've you've nailed all that knowledge did very little to actually enrich the soul it did very you know it only really satisfied a few um requirements that that really did very little for society whereas if we build the society of learning from the ground up which is something a dow can facilitate then we will not only become better citizens ourselves but we'll be helping each other out in the process my name is matt wood again i'm from ample i would love to talk with everybody with regards to video streaming and our hopes to solve licensing thank you very much a pattern language thanks man