Space of Flows

The Economist Manuel Castells describes the modern world as a space of flows. Flows of information, communication, ideas, money, people etc. The word flow seems so soft and friendly, belonging to the world of nature. But as in Castells original context, a space of flow can be destructive, washing away the continuity within communities, eroding the banks of our comfortable worlds.

When we introduce, overlay, space with digital information the nature of the flow changes, it intensifies. The concrete monuments of our cities begin to soften, due to an ever-changing flow of information.

For a flow to exist, you need borders… you need a context. This is perhaps why flow is a useful term when considering spatialised technologies. The material realm can start to act as the banks to guide the flow of information and action.

The materiality of our cities can act to give us borders… but what about space without boarders? A city with no limits? We need boarders to construct our identities, what is the map without the edge, without a line to demarcate what is here and what is there? So what happens when the boundaries get fuzzy?

Comments

[Andrew]

I remember at the last Doors in Amsterdam seeing Malcolm McCullogh give this talk, "Flow needs fixity":
http://flow.doorsofperception.com/content/mccullough_trans.html
and thinking, finally! someone points out this obvious fact about flows.

In many ways, managing or designing "flows" is not about flows at all: it means designing boundaries, rules, constraints, and limits.

[Abe Burmeister]

Perhaps irrelevant, perhaps not, but Castells is not an economist at all but a sociologist. Even with the resurgence of heterodox economics and the rise of post-autistic economics, few in the field are ready to grapple with the sort internetworked spaces that Castells does...