Communication Revolutions

1
Communication Revolutions
iga Turk, Assoc. Prof. ziga.turk_at_uni-lj.siUniver
sity of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic
Engineering
2
Motivation
3
Industrial revolutions

• agricultural - Neolithic
• domesticated animals
• planting and harvesting
• industrial
• machine replacesmuscle power
• information
• computer replaces brain power

4
Communication revolutions

• writing - possibility to store information
  externally
• paper and print - make the above universally
  accessible
• electronic media - store and move information
  without a material media
• digitalization - make the above universally
  available

3100BC
1500AD
1900AD
2000AD
5
Communication and the construction
professionBefore writing
3100BC
6
Communication and the construction
professionBefore drafting models
D27m H50m
D33m H55m
500AD
1500AD
7
Pre-industrial organisation of construction

• art and craft, master builders
• little specialisation
• no documentation
• Information technology
• speech, sand sketches
• organisation and management
• ad hoc

8
The p-business revolution

• gunpowder, cannons, ice cream, spagetti
• China before lt1300
• Ottoman empire (15th,16th century)
• siege of Vienna
• information technology (printing)
• China lt1300
• Europe (15th century)
• Islamic world (18th century)
• related ideas
• scaled drawing Bruneleschi (1420)
• scaled geometrical model
• perspective Alberti (1435)
• scaled mechanical model Galilei (1500)
• pBusiness p-paperprint
• eBusiness e-electronic

9
Implications

• science and technology
• Arab algebra and trigonometry not linked to
  technology
• scientific method
• models, symbols, conceptualisation
• organisation of labour, management
• culminates with Taylor, 20th century

10
Communication and the construction
professionPaper based drawings

• When we mean to build,
• We first survey the plot,then draw the model,
• And when we see the figure of the house,
• Then must we rate the cost of the erection
• William Shakespeare, King Henry IV

3100BC
1500AD
1900AD
11
Construction in the industrial age

• masters replaced by teams of specialists
• fragmentation requires collaboration
• enabled by technology
• technical drawings etc.
• modern IT

12
Communication and the construction
professionElectronic communication

• wired
• telegraph, telephone, fax
• wireless
• radio, TV
• limited support/impact for the construction
  information formats

13
Communication revolutions and construction
master builders
local teamwork
global teamwork
limited documentation,oral communication no
clear space/time separation between information
and material processes
paper based documentation,paper based
communication material and information processes
separated in space and time
digitised communicationdigitised
documentation information sub-processes
separated in time and space
1500ADpaper and print
2000ADdigital communication
14
Construction yesterday
15
Construction today
16
Construction tomorrow
17
Further reading

• http//www.zturk.com/db/use/works/Show?_idf6d4