Whether railroads or electricity or the Internet, there is always some sense that this is the new, redemptive platform - that finally, finally, we've found the platform that will allow us all to lead a democratic, global existence, where all problems will be solved. And the idea that the old platform becomes obsolete, "this kills that," and so on, also often accompanies the advent of a new technology. The digital platform is no exception.

Rather than asking architecture to be more interdisciplinary - a perennial issue within the discipline - I am suggesting that other disciplines might exploit the powers of architecture and urbanism. When addressing urgent situations, whether it's the depletion of the rainforest or abuse of labor, well-meaning people are working with tools, like standards, that seem like very blunt instruments. I am suggesting that spatial variables that are underexploited in governance might add to that repertoire.

There are dangers surrounding innocuousness and consensus and habit. ISO organizes hundreds of people on technical committees who are, no doubt, trying to do their best. But the standards in some cases end up reinforcing violence and destruction thousands of miles away.

There is a comfort with design that may be a detail, rather than a building; comfort with form that is time-released and never finished. How do you represent an instruction set that will play out in time? There may be slightly different kinds of documents for representing those forms, and different skills for advocating change outside of our fee-for-service habits.

Architects and urbanists are fascinated with cities that are shrinking, like the Rust Belt cities. Or, alternatively, we are fascinated with the growth of favelas and informal settlements. The 2008 financial crisis made these changes more extreme. The subtraction protocols rehearse a way of thinking about multiple properties in counterbalancing interdependence - not just the shaping of one property but the ratcheting interplay between properties.

It wasn't an architect who did this, but if it had been an architect, it would have been a good day's work: there was a marketing person who convinced Walmart that their products sold better in daylight than electric light. It would have been interesting if an architect had deliberately designed this change with all its spatial consequences in mind, thinking about how the change would multiply across all the square footage of all the roofs of all the Walmarts in the world. It would have been a beautiful trick - a physical, practical, political pleasure.

In architecture, to do anything beyond object form is often treated as something extra-disciplinary - something outside the discipline that has nothing to do with art. So I'm making it clear that this is an artistic choice. It's not everyone's artistic choice. Some people should choose only to make object form because that's what gives them pleasure. But there are people for whom aesthetic pleasure comes from doing something else, and why would you deny that choice? It's another autonomous choice.