Reading 1 : Steadman

Q1_ The idea of Spacemate seems interesting, but is something like this actually used in practice?

Q2_ Why did Jones and Alexander distance themselves from their original research?  Did they eventually come to a conclusion that their ideas were not as useful as proposed?

Q3_ In the reading it was talked about how early CAD was supposed to be a generator of design then switched to a representational tool for design.  What has caused us to revisit that idea now?

Reading 2 : Coyne

Q1_ “Architectural research has a relatively small audience, producing modest metrics.  In so far as numbers have any kind of influence, then architectural researchers may start to skew their outputs to appeal to an even wider audience.”  I think this is a very dangerous issue.  We have seen what relying on these metrics has done to journalism, where small newspapers have shut down and can no longer report on local politics and have been replaced with clickbait pseudo news outlets such as buzzfeed, slate, etc.  Here depth and analysis have been replaced with breadth and emotionally charged words used simply to rattle the cages of readers rather than offer any legitimate insite.  Furthermore, these outlets hardly ever produce their own content and instead summarize summaries from other sources.  Is this the direction we want architectural research to head in?

Q2_ Should the benefit of research even be measured in typical media metrics?  The general public sometimes does not make the connection of the benefits of research and thus a valuable research topic could be shut down by simply not producing enough twitter followers.

Q3_ The idea that much research needs to be funded makes plenty of sense, but it is not important to understand who is funding research?  There can always be ulterior motives that can possibly skew research results.