social fiction | psychogeography

readme.walk

Generative psychogeography(*), walking on algorithms as a means to explore the city, translates ideas from computer science to the real world. The next logical challenge was to take the whole concept a step further & to start regarding:
(1) The city as a database
(2) The city as a switchboard

(1) The City as a Database.
Quoting urban theorist Lewis Mumford: "[T]he great city is the best organ of memory man has yet created". The city is a memory bank or in modern terms a database. The database is perhaps the most post-modern product of the digital revolution: no longer are data units separated entities: by feeding the database queries every data can be correlated to uncover unexpected patterns. If the city is a database then .walk software improves the power of the generative psychogeographical search method by adding formulised shifts in the formula, connecting the pandemonium of individual action into an interconnected meta-software to share information & experiences.      

(2) The City as a switchboard
The most radical application of algorithmic walks is to use them in a scheme much more complex: the construction of a UGPC (Universal Generative Psychogeographical Computer). In this urban computer the city is the hardware that functions as a switchboard or an abacus. The software running on top of this hardware are the pedestrian agents walking according to rules that generate the route (= data processing), exchanging information as they interact on their 'random' encounters.
In theory the UGPC should be able to solve any mathematical problem.
The .walk(*2) software development is only the first feeble attempt to program the urban logic gate staring at us.
The UGPC is meant to be platform independent, so a .walk applet that computes Pi in one city should work in any other city as well.  



.walk tutorial here


*) for instance:

2nd street left 1st street right 2nd street left repeat

*2) for instance

// Interactive Generative Psychogeography // Filename: interact1.walk // This open source software is produced by // www.socialfiction.org // // T = Time (in minutes) // E = Exportcode // C = Counter E = 3 C = 0 Repeat { E = X 1 st  street left 2 nd street right X      street left When 2 programs meet { Exchange E   C + 1 } Count T 0 to 60 If time = 60 { abort to Root print C to socialfiction.org }