[courses]

Circulation/ CHSR, UCSD

[06.2009]

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Very Large Scale Interaction Design and Urban Scale Computing:
The Case of California High Speed Rail
An Undergraduate ICAM research seminar, Fall 09
Benjamin H. Bratton, Dept. of Visual Arts
bbratton@ucsd.edu

This seminar focuses on the conception, planning and projective design of a very large scale public infrastructural systems at a time when very large scale public infrastructure systems are very much not budget priorities. We begin with the definition of such infrastructures not just as Mumfordian megamachines but as a kind of artificial ecology in which and for which an unpredictable world of micro and macroeconomies appear and flourish. In fact we presume that these conditionally unforeseeable emergences are not supplemental accidents, but finally the most important socio-technical systems to emerge. They are not a means to socially enable the big machine, but rather the inverse; in a way, they are the real infrastructure. But how, if at all, can they be designed? Or how can the fixed technological systems be designed so as to better enable that emergence, and extend interaction design not only of computing experiences but of systemic experience that may or may not be based on computational systems.

Course Structure Students will work in groups of no more than 6 students for the duration of the course. Groups will be determined in class.

Groups will work together to develop their scenario and interaction design proposal for final presentation at course completion. Each student’s grade will be determined 50% by the quality of the final proposal and 50% by a final term paper on their research to be turned in during finals week.

Scenarios Groups will work to develop a detailed possible scenario for the future of California and of what the CHSR project would look like under such conditions. Each groups scenario will be different, some will be optimistic others pessimistic. Each will provide us with a picture of a possible situation, and together they will allow us to clarify what the role of interaction design might be in the future of California’s public culture and public spaces. On scenario planning, see http:// www.well.com/~mb/scenario_planning/

Location visit Students will spend time doing site visits at proposed sites for the CHSR and will gather original and secondary documentation. All work produced in the course will be shared with all other students via a course Wiki. On CHSR see http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm
California High Speed Rail Built over the next decade, CHSR will represent the largest single infrastructural investment in California’s history. It will physically link the state’s north and south capital centers, as well as bring the Central Valley region “on line” like never before, making it a regional hub.
But like any major infrastructure, and especially transportation, its reach and effects far exceed
its core machinery. CHSR is not just a train, It is urban design, interaction design, social design, energy system, economic design.

Infrastructure as artificial ecology The Obama administration has identified HSR as a national priority as part of making inter-city transportation more scalable and sustainable. Shuttling an expected 80 million fares per year, CHSR can be seen as a 200 mph rolling city. As it speeds through smaller cities, it will spur densification and link them to capital metropoles. It will anchor new regional intermodal transportation systems, relieving the pressures of the automobile imperative. But its most important impacts go well beyond transportation design: for it to succeed CHSR must perform as a robust meta-urban spine, linking mediating emergent economies up and down the state.
DPP sees CHSR not as single fixed machine, but as an artificially-developed ecological system. The design problems it poses relate to interfaces operating at multiple scales, at the scale of a city and the scale of a person, some fixed and in motion, some singular and plural. Our long-term research maps important points of convergence and divergence within these networks as the basis of a flexible policy framework.

Integrative interaction design across multiple scales By modeling CHSR as a complex socio-technical network and not only as a transportation system, key design opportunities are clarified and design policy can be developed. These are driven by specific challenges:
-- How can each of the currently proposed 26 stations be carefully planned to support appropriate-scale multi-use programs, to plug-in with surrounding urban fabric beyond transportation intermodality, and to amplify bottom-up applications of the infrastructure and its pubic setting?
-- As an integrated information and computational environment, CHSR will be a site of robust interactive economies, locative social media, and innovative work/play programs. As a vast hardware/ software platform, how can CHSR be designed as an open, scalable platform able to react to unforeseeable needs?
-- If CHSR may also be seen as a rolling supercomputer, generating, sorting and provisioning exabytes of data, and its track system may house a strong public fiberoptic backbone linking state and municipal governments together enabling new service efficiencies, how can it support governance and beyond the needs of transportation?
-- As a core catalyst of alternative energy sourcing, from tidal power to solar accumulators, and of bidirectional distribution over smarter grid networks, how can CHSR spur similar shifts in other large public and private projects?

The stakes of investment and invention CHSR will inevitably effect the social and technological fabric of California in many ways, but how so? For a state that had seemingly abandoned centrally-planned public infrastructure, does CHSR signal a post-recession trend toward macrotechnologies as platforms for microeconomies, or a one-off generation opportunity to build megascale foundations? Either way it is critical to strategize the investment to ensure maximum social payoff.

Given the resources and dynamism of California, CHSR should be the most advanced public transportation system ever realized, but it won’t be if its design does not draw the imagination and expertise of the state’s talent base. DPP serves as one platform for this collaboration to redefine priorities and to focus possibilities.

Through CHSR we ask fundamental questions anew: What is a city when it is physically linked iwth other cities, when it is in motion? What is the microsociology small-scale, location-based
communication networks and what role if any should government have in ensuring they are most useful to its citizens? What impact do we want to ensure or prevent on the California environment? On growth and sustainability? In commute what is impact on the social experience of time passing and space contracting? In short, how does advanced public technology lead to a better quality of public life?

Week One, Sept. 28
Introduction to course, and discussion of stakes for California.

Week Two, Oct. 5 Introduction to Networks, Pervasive Computing, Systems and Interface Theory Readings will be sent via Email (PDF’s and web links)

Week Three, Oct 12 Introduction to CHSR, tour of CALIT2. Class to be held in CALIT2 Readings will be sent via email (multiple web links and online resources)

Week Four, Oct 19 Introduction to scenario planning. Readings will be sent via email (multiple web links and online resources)

Week Five, Oct 26 Site visit(s) to UTC, San Diego, and/or Escondido. Students coordinate

Week Six, Nov 2 Initial project proposals made to class

Week Seven, Nov 9 Secondary project proposals, project development Supplementary lecture on case-modeling, use-cases and design research Readings will be sent via email (multiple web links and online resources)

Week Eight, Nov 16 Project development intensive In class work and group critique

Week Nine, Nov 23 Individual meetings with groups, 40 min each.

Week Ten, Nov 30 Final presentation of group scenarios and projects

Finals Week, individual term papers due, 3000 word minimum.

Tags: culture industry, mobility, bio media

Published: 06.29.2009

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