Hindsight is for sale
How much should we be buying?
Tsunami Stones
In the hills dotting the coastline of Japan are ancient carved stones, some of them date back 600 years. They speak of peace, harmony and calamity. They warn future generations, “Do not build any homes below this point” and “when an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis.”
On March 11, 2011 an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 struck off the coast of Japan. It wobbled the earth on its axis and sent a massive tsunami ultimately killing over 15,000 people. However, lives were saved because of the “hindsight” inscribed for them in stone.
Japan has 1600 years of seismic records. In 2008, a computer simulation indicated that a repeat of a past event would inundate the Fukushima nuclear power plant. When the 2011 waters came, all three reactors melted down.
Seattle Underground
I grew up outside of Seattle, WA. Early Seattle was a mud-hole with a tide problem. Horses and buggies would completely disappear into sinkholes. Twice a day when the tide rolled in, sewers ran backwards and shot out the toilets. It was such a problem, they began setting their toilets high on a platform.
Like many cities ravaged by disaster, Seattle was forced to start again after the Great Fire of 1889. The obvious solution was to move up one story out of the mud, raise the streets, and turn storefront windows into basements. It is an amazing story. Today there is a tourist attraction where you can walk a section of the underground which looks largely as they left it, save for a prohibition speakeasy.
Red Teaming
Cyber security firms today use a practice borrowed from the military known as “Red Teaming.” A “Red Team” is typically brought in on offense to assess and attack the defenses built by the “Blue Team.” To over-simplify it, the Red Team imagines your worst-case scenario and then tries to make it happen with every tool at their disposal. It is a purposeful process and when done well, both teams may identify vulnerabilities to shore up, helping to ensure their apocalypse is never realized.
COVID-19
Right now the entire world is locked in an all out war with a killer piece of RNA wrapped in a lipid bi-layer. The only thing that matters right now is trying to save lives, and according to science, that means staying home.
Like everyone else, to do our part andculture closed our doors and we’ve all been remote for several weeks now. As a design agency, we don’t take for granted just how fortunate we are to be able to continue doing the work we love with our client partners.
As we connect with each other and our clients remotely from home, the greater sense of humanity is palpable (and it is not just the interruptions from children). We see an increased allowance for the “what if” and “should we” conversations with our partners that were often squeezed out by the demanding pursuit of progress.
Broken Realities
We live in a click-to-undo, two-day-shipping, auto-scale, just-in-time, selfie world. While they are far from perfect, these realities are now the higher ground, the cities that have already been rebuilt. It is where we used to play, and where we are now forced to live and work.
From this precarious perch, we stare down in horror as the C-19 tsunami washes away the broken realities of our healthcare systems, service and travel industries, economic markets, supply chains, and everything in between.
This is the Great Fire of Seattle, and everyone knows it.
Urgent New Deal
Thinkers talk in cliche about “the box.” In Japan, ancient stones warn of a box that was long forgotten. When the box burned in Seattle, they built a new one (you can tour the old one for ~$20). When finding your weakness, successful Red Teams don’t think outside the box, they think without the box.
At andculture, we solve broken realities. It is going to take every one of us, working together, to imagine and rebuild after this storm. When the time comes, we are ready and excited to do our part.
Hindsight is wisdom often earned through pain. We owe it to those who went before and to those who will follow, not to waste this opportunity. Let’s work together tirelessly to save lives today, and invest in future lives at stake by redesigning everything around us. Let’s act with clarity and urgency.
What ancient stones should we heed? What stones should we be leaving for future generations? Is this pandemic our worst-case scenario, or will the next one be much worse? How will we rebuild new cities in a more human way?
