For a long time, we have known that, whatever our future society will be, it will be a “risk society” [2] —a
society likely to be affected by different kinds of traumatic events (from natural catastrophes, to war and
terrorism, to financial and economic crisis). We have known for a long time, therefore, that the precondition
for every possible sustainable society is its resilience — its capability of overcoming the risks it will be exposed
to and the stresses and breakdowns that, inevitably, will take place. [24] Today, the implications of this risk
society are no longer only projected. They are becoming evident worldwide in our daily life experiences; the
notion of resilience is moving into the vocabulary of more and more people. It would be wise to accelerate its
entrance into policy makers’ agendas and into the design community’s aims and practical actions.

RESILIENT SYSTEMS

But how do we design a resilient socio-technical system? Let’s look to
natural systems; their tolerance of breakdowns and their adaptation
capacity (that is, their capability of sustaining over time) may give us
direction. [6,13] As a matter of fact, it is easy to observe that lasting nat-
ural systems result from a multiplicity of largely independent systems
and are based on a variety of living strategies. In short, they are diverse
and complex. These diversities and complexities are the basis of their
resilience—that is, of their adaptability to changes in their contexts.

Given that, it should be reasonable to conceive and realize something
similar for man-made systems. The socio-technical systems that, inte-
grated with natural ones, constitute our living environment should be

made of a variety of interconnected, but (largely) self-standing elements.

This mesh of distributed systems, similarly to natural ones, would be
intrinsically capable of adapting and lasting through time because even
if one of its components breaks, given its multiplicity and diversity, the
whole system doesn’t collapse. [9]

How far are we from this complex, and therefore resilient, man-made
environment? In my view, this question has no single and simple answer;
contemporary society demonstrates a contradictory dynamism that
forces us, on this point as on many others, to describe what is happen-
ing as a double trend: the mainstream, unsustainable trend, enduring
from the last century, and a new, emerging trend. In our case, we have
the clash between the big dinosaurs of the XX Century, and the new,
interconnected small creatures of the emerging new world.

Considering this metaphor, we can see that the mainstream processes
of modernization, held over from the last century, are moving in the
“wrong direction’, trying to kill (what remains of) traditional agricul-
ture and craftsmanship and pushing toward global agro-industrial and
industrial production. In other words, we can see powerful interests
at work promoting large plants, hierarchical system architectures,
and process simplifications and standardizations. These interests are
therefore, consciously or not, using their power to reduce biodiversity
and socio-technical diversity and, consequently, to increase the overall
fragility of the system.

Luckily, at the same time, something else happened and is happening;
new generations of distributed systems emerged and are emerging. This
emergence is driven by different factors: the power of technological net-
works and a growing number of enthusiasts (who, wherever these dis-
tributed systems become possible, tend to adopt them enthusiastically).
[3] This complex trend towards distributed systems can be described as
having three main waves of innovation.

The first evolution occurred when the architecture of information
systems shifted from the old hierarchical systems to new, networked
structures (distributed intelligence). This change started with the diffu-
sion of distributed intelligence and the radical changes in our systems of
organization it made viable. The result is that rigid, vertical organization-
al models that were dominant in industrialized society are melting into
fluid and horizontal ones as new distributed forms of knowledge and de-
cision-making become more common. [23,1] The success of this innova-
tion is such that, today, networked architecture is considered an obvious
“quasi-natural” state. But of course this is not the case; before laptops
and the Internet, information systems, concurrent with the mainstream
model at the time, were based on large mainframe computers and their
consequently hierarchical (and therefore fragile) architecture.

The second wave of innovation has altered energy systems. These shifts
are driven by a cluster of dynamic fields, including those producing
small, highly efficient power plants, renewable energy plants and “smart”
grids that intelligently connect them (distributed power generation).
Today, these new but already viable solutions are challenging the (still)
mainstream systems, which are based on large power plants and hierar-
chical (stupid and fragile) grids. Distributed power generation is one of
the main components of the ongoing and powerful “green technology”
trend. It is reasonable to think that energy systems will follow the tra-
jectory of information systems, moving increasingly toward distributed
system architectures. [18]

The third wave of innovations toward distributed systems challenges
mainstream globalised production and consumption systems. These
production systems include initiatives ranging from the rediscovery of
traditional craftsmanship and local farming, to the search for hyper-light
and lean production, to the hypothesis of networked production sys-
tems based on the potentialities of new forms of micro-factories such as
fab labs (“small-scale workshop[s] offering personal digital fabrication” )
[5] and by the makers movement (“[a] subculture...representing a tech-
nology-based extension of DIY culture.) [10] While this trend is still in its
initial phase, the whole production and use system must be re-shaped
following a new localization principle; products must be designed so that
their production can be as near as possible to where they will be used
(point of use production). This principle can be implemented by mixing
traditional technology, craftsmanship and high-tech solutions.

These three waves of innovation have one factor in common: they refer

toa globalisation aimed at using local resources and reducing distances
between both production and use, and producers and users. A range of
very different motivations has driven this result.

SUSTAINABILITY

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