What the machine cannot design

The machine cannot design because it cannot want the building to exist.

Wanting is the human part. I wrote the book before this one because a loss was sitting in me for years before the book. I could see the loss coming and I could not let it pass unnamed. That reason is not in the machine and cannot be put there.

I know a man who, twenty years ago, I did a small favour for.

I will not tell you what the favour was, or who he is. The particulars belong to him. I introduced him to someone. It helped him. He offered to pay me. I said no.

A year or so later we were in the same city for work. A group of us went out to dinner. The next morning, settling my hotel bill before flying home, I found it had already been settled. He had paid it on his way past the desk and not told me. I noticed because the receptionist mentioned it. I said nothing to him. He said nothing to me. We have seen each other once in the fifteen years since. Both of us know what happened. Neither of us needs to discuss it.

That bill is an act that makes no sense unless the person paying it is not keeping score. Keeping no score is the whole thing. The written record cannot capture keeping no score, because the act of recording is itself a kind of score.

When people ask the machine what to make, the machine will make something.

That thing will be competent and empty. Competent and empty is the current default of these tools. The tools are not at fault. The commission was never made.

The human who does not bring a reason gets a building nobody needed. Bringing a reason is the first thing in the working relationship. Without it, nothing else in this book matters.