I found the Mark Taylor reading "from grid to network" pretty interesting. I really liked the way he put together the first paragraph, saying that seemingly "unrelated developments, which had been gradually unfolding for years, suddenly converge to create changes that are disruptive as they are creative (p 19)." That basically sums up his overall message, that change happens over a long period of time but we can’t always detect that change until it is here and causes a disruption in our society, making it more complex. This complexity does not create chaos, however. Taylor states on page 23 that change is "bringing everything to the edge of chaos. This is the moment of complexity."
I thought his example of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a decisive moment when we saw the shift of an industrial society to an information society was very helpful in understanding his concept of change. The events that finally led to the wall coming down took place over years, but no one really saw it coming. People didn’t just wake up one day and say ‘hey, that wall is kind of a pain, let’s just knock it down,’ it took time and the day it finally came down was just the beginning of a drastic change our society has been going through ever since, from a grid culture to a network culture. This change is also evident, as Taylor said, in architecture.
You can see Taylor’s point about architecture here on the UW-Madison campus if you look at some of the older buildings compared to some newer ones. I think Van Hise and Humanities are perfect examples of a grid building. You can easily see it in Van Hise just by looking at it from the outside. It is very uniform and geometric. Humanities is more of a confusing, annoying grid in the way it is built. Then, looking at some of the newer or newly remodeled buildings and you can see more of a network feel. I think a good example is the fact that Sterling Hall is connected with Chamberlain Hall. Both are fairly old buildings but this connectivity between them is a good example of today’s culture.
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Humanities, i guess, is supposed to be riot-proof. it was built in the 60s i think and designed so that some staircases dont go everywhere and you cant get from one spot to another easily. I think this adds to the lack of connectivity and networking found in the building. It is very grid-like, but also since it is hard to navigate, the network capability decreases, and it is harder to have cohesion in the building.
I can see how humanities is a grid in some ways but it is also extremely confusing to walk in and I feel like there is no planned layout. When we were talking about grid buildings in class Van vleck and Van hise were the two main ones that came to mind for me. Those two are getting torn down soon though I think because they were only built to last 30 years.....I wonder what the new building will lok like....
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