OUR
RE.ASSEMBLED FUTURE
Algorithmic trading is a method of executing a large order using automated pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for variables such as time, price, and volume to send small slices of the order out to the market over time. It is widely used by investment banks, pension funds, mutual funds, and hedge funds because these institutional traders need to execute large orders in markets that cannot support all of the size at once. Source: Wikipedia
Algorithms are exceedingly good at Massive Dispersal and subsequent Re-organisation. A single gram of DNA has the capacity to hold 700 Terabytes of data. DNA Algorithms report mistakes as low as 1 error per Billion in bacteria. This mind boggling process takes place with fork speeds of up to 1000 nucleotides per second, with bacteria replicating their genome in less than an hour. Source : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26826/
The power of Algorithmic recombination can be deployed across sectors ranging from Banking to Disaster relief and Aid. When it eventually trickles down into Design and Architecture, it will fundamentally change the way we build and inhabit our Cities. An Algorithm can detect market trends and makes decisions in a matter of milliseconds. As parcels of information, resource and money become tinier and transactions become faster, humans are progressively left out of the loop. How can we harness the raw power of dispersal and recombination in the way we build our cities?
In 2008, SEBI permitted automated trading in India. Since then, the number of firms using Algorithmic trading has been on the rise, with current estimates putting the figure at 50% of the total volume. Non human real-estate occupancy will slowly proliferate around the Stock Markets of the Future, where readily deployable Architecture and Technological scaffoldings become colocated, or located very close to the Market, in order to make High Frequency Trades and gain an edge on competitor servers that are even a block away. By definition this kind of Architecture has to be Modular and Scaleable, with components being added or subtracted based on technological upgrades and downgrades.
Imagine a city where even the tiniest components contain Metadata. Each window, each brick, each plant and each appliance comes pre-tagged with intelligent source code. City Municipalities then deploy vast server farms capable of maintaining real-time inventory of this huge mass of moving parts. Now imagine the chance of a zero-waste, circular ecosystem of materials and objects that can enter new configurations on demand.
Algorithmic process may be our only chance to quantify and understand our own impact, and in recombination, allow us a shot at creating a sustainable future.
Cities are already deploying Algorithms to tackle crime, identify sensitive hotspots, and create resilience. Memphis’s police department reduced serious crime by over 30%, including a 15% reduction in violent crimes since 2006. The key is to introduce ethical, opensource, inclusive and intelligent Metadata into each component of our cities, to be housed in a city specific server. The server then uses this data to create a repair and maintenance schedule for the city, unclog its arteries, tap into traffic data, schedule demolitions and move usable resources to other areas of demand.
What if your city could tell you where to get 14000 panes of Toughened glass from 20 different locations for your new project in a week’s time? Those panes form part of a constant inventory of materials and components that pass through the Municipality’s Algorithms, allowing parts to be reallocated real-time. Demolition and Salvaging Guidelines now become as important as Building and Construction Codes. We take apart sensitively, to eventually build sensitively.
With distributed ledgers, the Internet of Things, Sensor-tech and powerful diagnostic tools all climbing fast towards deployable efficiencies, the way we conceive of Products and Architecture will undergo profound change. We will be aware of our ecological footprint at the early planning stages. Each material accounted for, each extra mile scrutinised, each step towards a circular economy incentivised. To make sense of this Future world, each of us will use an AI Centaur, and accept the Algorithm into our Design process as early as possible, to navigate this hyper-fast new reality.
Visualising complete ecosystems and the ripple effects we make through informed design decisions will be the greatest deployment of raw computing power. Vast inter-connected predictive networks would design fail-safes within which progressive policy can be framed. The regulation Algorithm of the Future will define how regressive or progressive a Society we become. For maybe the first time in Human history, we will see Real-time results of our mundane actions.
Consider this beautiful Map of the “Anatomy of an AI System” crafted by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler. The process of “Making Visible” itself has amazing consequences. In their painstaking research on the Amazon Echo, the mapping reveals a vast network of Human Labour, Geological extraction, and layers upon layers of “Value extraction”. In a Future where these maps are quantified, accessible, and deployed real-time, our definitions of Social justice and Equality cannot be left unchanged.
Source: https://anatomyof.ai
Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos made an average of $275 million a day during the first five months of 2018.
In context, a child in one of the cobalt mines that supplies amazon would need to work for approximately 700,000 years non-stop to earn the same amount. Source: https://anatomyof.ai
Once these lucid maps are created for every system we surround ourselves with using common data visualisation tools, the maps are able to inform each other. Portions of these maps overlap, enmesh and inform other maps, making them more detailed. Like Neural nets, the more maps we create, their usability increases exponentially. The City then regulates its own resources, transparently and responsively, with the power of overview.