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Arcosanti Paradox Project
What Is the Arcosanti Paradox Project?
Background
Paolo Soleri proposed the
Arcosanti Paradox Project in early 1997 with these words:
"Since Arcosanti
is a place in search of the miniaturized by way of complexity, and since cyberspace
is a non-place in search of the complex by way of miniaturization,
I am proposing an internship which will bring these two places
together via the practice of building and living in a non-virtual
environment frugally imprinted, a habitat dedicated to urbanization ... "
The Paradox Project has two complementary purposes:
1. To explore
the fundamental issues raised in the intersection of Arcology and cyberspace.
2. To support new Arcosanti funding initiatives
targeted at the affluent members of the cyberspace community.
Funding the construction costs of Arcosanti has been an ongoing challenge.
Over the past 20 years, philanthropic support for Arcosanti has fallen
far short of the amount required to significantly accelerate the
pace of construction. This situation has continued in spite of several
major funding initiatives supported by professional quality business
proposals. Before committing Arcosanti's limited resources to another
funding campaign, Tomiaki Tamura has asked
the appropriate question:
"What's different
about the Paradox Project? Why would it succeed when so many
initiatives haven't?"
The Potential
Our answer to this question
is that there is something different about the Paradox Project.
As Paolo pointed out in his original Paradox Project proposal,
the global expansion of the Internet during the 1990s has created
a new subculture of relatively young and affluent cybrarians.
His premise is that these cybrarians represent a fundamentally
new potential source of support and funding for Arcosanti.
We agree with Paolo's premise.
The are already approximately 100 million people using the Internet,
and this number is projected to continue its exponential growth
over the next few years. The average age of the members of the
cyberspace community is younger than most other professional
groups, a good sign because the most avid supporters of Arcosanti
have tended to be younger people not yet overly involved in busy
careers.
We have also noticed that
a significant number of the core innovators of cyberspace technologies
and online content creators have read Teilhard de Chardin, and
think of cyberspace as an early manifestation of his "Noosphere" hypothesis.
And of these, a surprising percentage know of and are favorably
disposed toward Paolo Soleri and Arcosanti.
The potential is clear.
Realizing the Potential
If it's true that the cyberspace
community is a fundamentally new and potentially large source
of ongoing support and funding for Arcosanti, to realize its
potential will require reaching out to this community using means
and language its members will respond to.
Cyberspace itself, the
virtual place where cybrarians meet and learn, is the obvious
medium for these promotional efforts, and has the added virtue
of being far less expensive than traditional media.
The Elements of the
Paradox Project
In our experience with
various cyberspace media, the most effective means of promoting
new initiatives to cybrarians is via the World Wide Web, using
a combination of web sites, virtual online communities, real-time
chats, email and E-Zines.
Arcosanti already has a
high-quality web site which continues to evolve under the able
direction of Rob David, Arcosanti's Webmaster. We are now in
the process of designing and implementing the "Paradox Virtual
Community" (PVC), an asynchronous virtual community, which includes
real-time chats, email and E-Zine capabilities.
The Arcosanti web site
and the PVC play complementary roles, with the web-site providing
multimedia information about Arcosanti, and the PVC providing
a two-way interactive communication and project planning/coordination
capability for cybrarians interested in Arcosanti and Paradox.
The PVC is fully html-based and accessible from ordinary web
browsers, and thus doesn't require downloading special software.
Hot links can be provided within posted messages back to the
Arcosanti web site and to uploaded background documents.
The Virtual Arcosanti Model
(VAM) is the third element of the Paradox Project. Its purpose
is to provide a virtual experience of living in the completed
Arcosanti 2000 arcology. VAM is well underway. Architectural
drawings of Arcosanti 2000 created in AutoCAD over several years
have now been reformatted in 3D Studio Max, a high-quality 3D
modeling program. Portions of these drawings have been exported
to VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language), which allows the
user to take a self-paced walk-through of Arcosanti 2000. We
are also working on rendering these elements into a high-speed
fly-through animation of Arcosanti 2000.
The fourth element of the
Paradox Project is the Paradox Workshop. It has recently been
successfully prototyped, and has now been authorized to run concurrently
with the standard Arcosanti Workshop Program for
the rest of this year. Participants are selected for their computer
skills, and are expected to spend half of their workshop time
working on the Paradox Project. Those workshoppers who are willing
to make a minimum 2-month additional commitment to implementing
a particular element of the Paradox Project may be selected to
stay on at Arcosanti as "Paradox Associates," and several have
already done so.
The intent of the Paradox
Workshop is to gradually assemble a team of skilled cybrarians
here at Arcosanti to implement the Paradox Project.
The fifth element of the
Paradox Project is the annual Paradox Conference,
held each Fall at Arcosanti. The prototype Paradox
Conference, held in October of 1997, was attended by over 150
cybrarians, many of whom are now involved in various aspects
of the Paradox Project. This year's Paradox Conference, dubbed "Paradox II," is scheduled for September 24-26 and over
300 attendees are expected.
Paradox II is being co-sponsored
by several departments at Arizona State University. Panelists
include a cross-section of high-level cybrarians who are professionally
involved in creating cyberspace, virtual reality, and artificial
intelligence technologies. Informed critics of the potential "dark
side" of cyberspace and AI will also be attending, with the intent
of initiating an ongoing dialogue between advocates and critics.
To summarize, the Paradox
Project initiatives in cyberspace now include:
1. The existing
Arcosanti Web Site.
2. The online Paradox Virtual Community (PVC)
3. The Virtual Arcosanti Modeling Project (VAM)
4. The Paradox Workshop
5. The annual Paradox Conferences
It's our hope that the emergent property from these cyberspace initiatives
will be ongoing interactive participation in the Paradox Project
by a growing number of cybrarians.
We believe this ongoing
participation with Arcosanti in cyberspace is the sine qua non
for the outreach, involvement, and growing personal commitment
that can lead to successful realization of the support and funding
potential that the cyberspace community represents for Arcosanti.
We invite your participation
with us to realize these objectives.
Ron
Anastasia
Director, Arcosanti Paradox Project
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