thanks again Valerie... the thought processor is born:

mid term

tetra-kai-decohedron FAIL

The attitude I'm developing to doing a project without a site is to think of system that can be deployed in different environmental conditions. One of the most fertile types of locations that has come up so far is the desert. This links back to my earlier research on the humble, collective lifestyle of the Anasazi as well as projecting us in to a future where global warming has increased the land area of deserts wold wide. A few factors make the desert conceptually fertile ground. One is that they are a likely eventuality, two is that they demand highly developed and diversified strategies for survival within a very narrow and unforgiving niche, three is that designing in the desert with our studio's criteria in mind (especially the tension between mobile and stationary I'm developing in my project) will provide an interesting critique of modern models of desert development whose shining permanence seems all the more haunted for its spectacular quality by the images of modern ruin that science fiction has foretold again and again.

on creativity and the limits of individual identity
Elizabeth Gilbert at TED Talks

thanks Valerie! NYtimes article on neuro-prosthetics

Since several other people here are starting with the individual unit I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a collaboration on the design of the individual-collective relationship.

Individual-physical-profane-temporal city vs. Collective-digital-sacred-permanent city
Self Sufficiency: Centralized and Dispersed, active search and passive collection
Collective ideals with public pleasures

here is the initial text I read, it's a bit cheesy no? ...trying to get over my embarrassment!

oh and the references I'm quoting:
By Dan Simmons (Hyperion, Ilium - themes of interest: bio-engineering and future societies, manipulation of time by military industrial complex, artificial intelligence, ultimate intelligence, the god head, deity as evolved consciousness, quantum physics and potential alternate realities)

By Lois Lowry (The giver, Gathering Blue - themes of interest: future social structure absent governments, visions of how city states might establish an internal social order.

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The love child between the primal human needs of connection and self invention were just beginning to show signs of fruit when the destabilizing forces of hyper-capitalism caused the governments to receded. The latest version of this new bio-technology was called the "3rd_i" - the future incarnation of the personal mobile device - now integrated into the DNA of what what can now be called the post-human race. Some say the weakening and fall of central power was influenced by the growing saturation of possibility invested in person to person relationships granted by the post-human functions, which incorporated social networking, experience sharing and compatibility matching to a much more sophisticated level than previously realized by the primitive networks of human kind. Mostly, everyone has forgotten why human cultures needed laws, federal governments and leagues of nations to keep order on the planet. There are no borders to define nations there are no armies.
Conflict however, is still the close companion of what remains of our old-style human DNA, but there is no murder, no starvation and very little bodily injury thanks to the empathy sharing function of the 3rd_i, by which the direct physical condition of the individual is tracked and shared with the community as visceral experience. This one function has created an eminently safe psychological environment in which movement between social groups is fluid.
The enhanced compatibility matching and precise Geo-location functions of the 3rd_i allow people to find home wherever they travel among the city-states that now dominate the climate of the global politics. These are communities based on shared values, history and sometimes ongoing debates. The large old-style cities have broken into collections of tribes and the smaller cities have become regional enclaves into and from which individuals can flow. The lack of central planning but increased collectivism has completely rebuilt how the communities think about energy and material flows consumed and produced by society. Popular religion has shifted from traditional anthropomorphic representations of creation and destruction to directly embrace Generation and Entropy and the essential forces playing themselves out in the life cycle.