Hothouse Musings. A Deeper Understanding. Morphogenesis in Nature and Society.

                                               ALL PHOTOS CLICK FULL SCREEN.
On a recent wander around the Glasgow park-lands, some of which may at some stage be sold off to private developers for luxury housing projects as is already happening in many other parts of the UK at the moment under an increasing " it used to be a treasured public facility but it costs far too much to maintain so lets get rid of it and make some money " ongoing current popular agenda. A Common Blue Butterfly here which got me thinking about Alan Turing's Morphogenesis theory of Reaction:Diffusion to explain how animals, including us, have fingers and toes, how tigers and zebras end up with various stripes yet others have spots, flora and fauna patterns, and how all this can be explained as a form of natural engineering through chemicals and other factors interacting. Basically, the more we learn about the natural world the more it does seem to have been 'designed' or fits into mathematical profiling at any rate.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2014/11/turings-morphogenesis-theory-drives-research-into-self-configuring-systems/
I don't pretend to understand all of this link but the general themes I can appreciate. Maybe at some future date using this theory in practice we can build not just 3D printed organs and structures but actually grow them organically- almost like a flower or an embryo grows using the same basic principles... Or buildings. Science Fiction has long imagined structures/ spaceships/ humans that combined both natural and synthetically grown materials into one cohesive unit.

A classic give and take system in action with a busy bee. All directions covered.

After all, it's only eleven short years since the Ray Winstone film Beowulf came out in 2007 as an animated version of the classic tale. It was a good enough film but also memorable for the lifeless eyes of many of the characters in close up. Jump forwards eleven years and you get this-..... a complete world of realistic looking plants, animals and humans with eyes full of expressive intent.




 In another 50 years will we know this world from the 'real' one? In 200 years will we know if we are still human and not just a regenerated version living in a simulated universe. What if we are there already and just don't realise it yet? Could we be created and designed? These fleeting thoughts and mental brush strokes of imagination certainly passed the time on a warm Sunday afternoon around the Kelvingrove district. Decades ago in the 1960s these ideas and concepts were certainly around in some of the books I read then but to be honest they seemed about as plausible and certain to come true as a flat earth with the oceans pouring over the edges... now though I'm not so sure given the leaps in technology over the last 30 years.

A self contained world under glass at the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow. Is this plant aware that it is growing up in an artificial environment or does it have its core needs satisfied to the extent that it doesn't really care. Obviously it couldn't survive outdoors at these latitudes anyway even if it was aware to some extent that it's living life in a sheltered dome.

This dome in fact.

One of the tree info signs in the Botaniic Gardens. I never thought I be getting such an interesting lesson in American history wandering in a west end park on the other side of the Atlantic but there you go.

I've found myself looking at things differently and in great detail on recent walks over the past few years and the more you look deeper into design features the more complex they become.

Is it just me or does this orchid resemble a walnut whip interior? ( well, an old style one anyway before they shrunk the interior and reduced the chocolate and nut content.)

Another orchid. The mouth of a hungry bird or just some weird coincidence?

An orchid or a hunting insect looking for a victim? Very mantis like. Or a tiny bird of prey in flower form.

Soon I was starting to see things that weren't there. Like a wood elf and a small velociraptor behind the middle part of this fence. Maybe need a decent sized screen though for that to happen.

Or a line of chatty women getting their hair styled in the local salon. Incidentally, I agreed wholeheartedly with Germaine Greer's comments last night about the # MeToo and Time's Up movements in that if it's taken so long since the 1960s to get to this feeble stage and still so little forward progress in general thinking and workplace attitudes/practices then there's not much hope unless suffragette style action is taken. The rise of the internet, with body shaming, surgically enhanced celebrities as desirable role models to aspire towards, overall casual degradation of women online everyday (but not men) and in social media comments everywhere ( from men and women.. who should know better) and the easy, always tempting option of shedding clothes and values as a tried and tested career path in certain influential industries to get ahead/ get noticed.... i.e in films, television, fashion, music, other entertainments etc means that women's lib is an uphill battle with a giant marble that's always gravity defined to roll back down again the instant you stop shoving. And it's been that way for millions of years. (Just wipe us out altogether and leave the marble alone.) The fact that many women in 2018 in Glasgow are getting three pounds an hour less than men for doing the exact same job says everything about progress on that front. I've had a few female bosses in the past so I presumed they were paying themselves the going rate but you never know until it's out in the open.
As unfair a set of scales as a recent programme about affordable social housing/ social cleansing/deliberate political tilted table engineering over decades highlighted in this link.
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6q2sh

 Before Grenfell: A Hidden History. BBC 2. A snapshot of what's happening across the rest of the UK as well but focused on this one estate where a normal poor/ordinary working class family can all be working industriously over decades yet never afford to buy into London's booming property market but just a few streets away in Notting Hill and other affluent districts folk can earn more just from house value increases alone in one decade as that entire family gainfully employed over a lifetime of toil, scrimping and saving can. Unfair enough in itself but of course due to the UK system at present many have used that extra cash to buy ex- council properties, snapping them up elsewhere then renting them out to poorer folks who actually live in that area but are way down the ladder, cash wise, for a further profit. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Now I understand how people can afford to buy all the luxury properties they seem to be building everywhere I've noticed on cycle rides over the last decade. Not since the mid 1800s has this level of inequality existed in the UK and it has been engineered deliberately in many instances. This programme raised interesting points going back 50 years into the birth and transformation of that estate and London as a city. It got me thinking at one point...   'are the so called 'UK working class' turning into a redundant extra we no longer require ...with traditional jobs disappearing fast over the horizon? Not at present but in the near future. Or are they just changing into a Piranha feeding station instead with various outlets springing up every year to grab an extra mouthful of the action, capitalizing on desperation or stupidity. Legitimate short term loans, credit card industry, University loans...etc...(I get a new credit card offer in the post at least once a month. I could have dozens by now if I was that way inclined)
After all in the 1980s we switched from manufacturing and heavy industry into mass unemployment and a business and service society. Maybe another big change is on the way now and not in an obvious direction either.

  Anyway, back to colourful images again.

Flowers sprouting from a bare branch. Who needs leaves? In 50 years time will we actually need the numbers of ordinary workers around at present or will they become an increasingly unnecessary commodity. Same thing happened with the weavers when machines replaced their efforts... and society moved on from strength to strength without them, rarely looking back.

A sunny day outside Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Bowls match in progress. My thoughts rolling along in tandem.

But maybe it doesn't always pay to look too closely at how the world around you works...

as you may not like what you find... ignorance is sometimes bliss.

A twice restored Glasgow School of Art perhaps if the city can afford it?... or luxury apartments instead utilizing the gutted shell facade of the recently burnt building and a few remaining fragments of period art thrown into the mix. Good views from that hilltop so a prime location. Our very own version of Edinburgh's Quartermile. Out with the old I say and in with gleaming glass and steel towers rising phoenix like from the ashes to soar above the city. Luxury penthouse apartments for speculators who might well choose to live elsewhere, even in another country,rather than occupy them but who would snap them up as a 'sure fire investment'. Not only will it save loads of money for Glasgow but 'Mackintosh Heights' would be a fine updated symbol of modern age Britain. Always a silver lining. (After all, he might well fall out of favour again in another 20 to 30 years time as he struggled to make a living at it when he was alive and was largely forgotten by his home city after his death until fairly recently.  This is the age of austerity after all and everyone must tighten their belts accordingly as we keep being reminded. We are all in this together. United by common adversity. No money now available in a permanently cash strapped UK, even for day to day living. Food banks are the way forwards from now on. Our new reality. Side by side, all born equal, pulling as one unit in our struggle upwards towards the light. Blah, blah blah, etc etc....

Robots and the desire to create artificial life is nothing new, of course. Here's a very lifelike attempt at it from the late 1800s. " for 100 dollars extra we can build you a soul."  The ancient Clockwork Guild............or a future bio- engineering project.