The Shapes of Things to Come

I once was taking classes at a school with two different locations.  While the composition of the students at both locations was similar, the “climates” were strikingly different.  At the first, let’s call it “congenial”, location, almost everyone was smiling and friendly with most other students, exchanged chit-chat, and really seemed relaxed.  At the second, ”distant”, location, students were focused only on class topics, engaged in few conversations with strangers, and were generally, as I said, distant.  After observing for a while, I concluded that a key, possibly The key, factor was the shape of the lunch room tables.  The distant location had only small 4 or 6 person rectangular tables, encouraging intimate conversation with old friends, but inhibiting meetings with strangers.  The congenial location had fewer large round tables, each seating 10 or 12, promoting mixing of all students, and it worked.  I thought of that the other evening having dinner with friends at a retirement community.  The dining room had a variety of sizes and shapes of tables, ranging from small square 2-person, which promotes intimate conversation, through medium to large rectangular, which promotes structured discussion led by a facilitator, to the moderately large circular table where my group was seated.  I thought “they know what they are doing here.”

One of the icons of public policy wonk history is Talleyrand, a French diplomat who served and survived the Ancient Regime, the Revolution, Napoleon and the restored Monarchy.  He obviously knew what he was doing.  As the French Foreign Minister at the Congress of Vienna which reshaped Europe after the defeat of Napoleon, Talleyrand had to fight tooth and nail for the survival of France in a room filled with people who had been at war with France for years and would have loved simply to dismember it; they wanted to exclude France from major discussions.  Protocol was important at the Congress, including who entered the room in what order and who sat at the head of the table.  Talleyrand skillfully refused to let the discussions proceed until a special room was built with a large circular table and separate doors for the simultaneous entrance of each country’s representatives.  Shape was important in setting the tone of the meetings, and he knew it.

That’s why I was encouraged to see a PBS program about the progress scientists are making in studying and copying the shapes of natural things to incorporate them into what we build.  What’s now being done is truly impressive.  I was not up to date on some current activity in my worrying previously about our over reliance on humaniform robots; we are not yet doing it large scale in America but our scientists are now creating robots of all shapes.  Some have arms like elephant trunks or that are fish shaped  – to facilitate lifting delicate things and allow danger free close-by human activity – or that bounce or walk on jointed legs like dogs to cross rough terrain, or that fly and swarm without a leader like a flock of birds to facilitate quick searches of large areas – getting around quickly and securely without depending on the dominance of one leader is important to birds.  Science is now focused on the importance of shape and relationships, and it is changing the world we live in.  Google has found that the placement of the free snacks it provides its workers affects both their nutritional health and their morale. The space we inhabit and the tools we use change the way we see the world.

For millennia, the shapes we live with and use were restricted mostly to those cheaply built by a carpenter with saw and hammer or by a mason or blacksmith.  That reduced the man-made world around us mainly to squares, rectangles and circles.  We devalued natural things as a world we had transcended.  There is so much more out there, and our scientists are now finding the value in it.  The importance of that is how it affects our relations with each other.  That dining room with small square tables inhibited getting along with each other; large circular ones made it easier.  One thing I emphasize is the psychological principle that our values follow our habits, the idea of  reducing “cognitive dissonance.”  As we make a habit of identifying the various values of the natural world, we are likely to find ways to improve how we get along with each other.  We can use a lot of that.