Environmental Modification Devices

Disclaimer:

I am not a carpenter or a builder or an architect or a civil engineer. I have, however, lived in houses most of my life. I have also lived on ocean going ships for a few years and I have slept in my car and on a haystack and in a tent and on trains and on planes on various occasions. None of this qualifies me to elaborate the spectrum of human domiciles, but there's little point in turning back after you get the bulk of the disclaimer written, so I might as well make the best of this.

This design will include various architectural styles and construction design goals along with vehicle types and other containers with various purposes. It is debatable as to whether I can actually blend these disparate objects into a cohesive whole, but I assume that you would be reading a nice safe encyclopedia if you were actually looking for 'useful' information.

Introduction

This is an exploration of various containers for humans, for their stuff and, perhaps, for life itself.

R. Buckminster Fuller thought of a 'house' as a machine for modifying your local environment. This is the main tack that I have taken in this design. I have, therefore, included other machines and enclosures that can also change your environment in some mental, physical or social way.

This Block is really just an overview, the aircraft sub-table alone could fill (at least) an entire block. Most of the terms in this design would actually be links to other Blocks which would deal more specifically with containers of that persuasion.

This design uses the following eight Types:

Physical Structures:

Hermitage

A house of solitude. This also relates to 'hermetic' which describes an 'air-tight' seal.

All houses attempt to "shut out the world" in some way. A perfect Hermitage shuts out everything. This is an unrealistic goal (because you'll eventually suffocate or starve or go stark raving mad from boredom), but we all seek the illusion of isolation now and then.

Vehicle

A 'house' on wheels or water or wings. 

Most houses change the weather (from cold to warm or from wet to dry, for example), these houses change your location. Since a Vehicle lets you move from a cold to a warm location or from a wet to a dry location, a Vehicle can change your environment as radically as any stationary house.

Fortress

A house of safety.

This Type relates primarily to the 'sturdiness' of the house. A Fortress need not be stationary, but it should resist unintentioned or involuntary movement (as from a tornado). The average suburban tract house is not much of a Fortress, but it is better than the average 'double-wide' mobile or manufactured 'home'.

Keeping annoying intruders out, however, is more the province of the Hermitage. A Fortress is often the abode of 'warriors' and other vermin. (where 'vermin' are creatures who never create but often destroy)

Cave

A (mostly) horizontal hole.

This is literally "rock bottom". When W.C. Fields (then William Claude Dukinfield) ran away from home at the age of eleven (to escape his abusive father) he spent his first night in a hole covered with boards in a nearby field. Just before morning, it rained and his 'cave' began to fill with cold water (and he still didn't go home). This is why the best caves are horizontal.

A Cave may be preferable to a Box or a Cocoon in fact, but it symbolizes a home which must first be wrested from bears or other top tier predators. A Cave is cold, dark, stationary, often dank and smelly and subject to hostile takeover attempts at odd hours of the morning. A Cave is the lowest form (no pun intended) of desirable real estate.

Mental Constructs:

Palace

A house of splendor.

This may be seen as the apotheosis of style over substance (or polish over performance or alliteration over allegory), but I prefer to see it as the expression of the desire for a little beauty in one's personal space.

School

A house of learning.

A good school should modify your social environment by increasing your value to society. This is best achieved when the school, your talents and interests and the needs of society are comfortably aligned, but almost any well intentioned education is better than ignorance. I have found that the oddest parts of my (admittedly mostly squandered) primary and secondary education have proven indispensable in some of the most unlikely places. 

Education is "what you make of it" as contrasted against training which is "what it makes of you".

Box

A house of necessity.

This is (hopefully) just the house where your stuff lives, but in times of trouble, nice warm dry cardboard boxes have been places of refuge for thousands of modern urban poor. This Type takes (mostly discarded or unwanted) local materials and and uses them to construct a temporary shelter.

Cocoon

A place to sleep.

This is the bare minimum of enclosure used to shut out the tribulations of the waking world. It may be a blanket or a coat (or your towel) or just a pile of leaves and twigs against a wall. In many cases it is a state of mind rather than any physical object.

Cocooning is more often a matter of wrapping than of building.

This block would require the Science, Business, Employment and Leisure laths. That would put it somewhere in the #C3 Specialization area.

The terms are organized into four tables, each containing four sub-tables (or banks) which consist of sixteen cells. Each cell contains a command, a keyword or a link depending on usage.  The headings before the four tables below and the (unique) element combinations that define each sub-table's purpose show the Physical Structure divisions. The four dark rows within each table separate the the sub-categories or banks and contain the (repeating) four Mental Construct element combinations that define the meaning of each individual cell.

This design only shows positive terms. Negative terms would be the opposite of each 'passive' term listed below. If the term is 'active', the negative form will invoke the function or be used to capture the state or current Value.

Cell #00 contains the name of this block of terms, it is used to create the Specialization "Table of Contents". If you select cell #00, you will lock-in this block of terms and you will need to unplug Command Mode to exit, even if these terms aren't commands. I can't think of a reason to select cell #00 that doesn't involve using the Table of Contents to lock-in this block of terms, so I don't see this as a problem.

The "Basic" sub-table is the default because that is where the majority of common generic domesticated terms reside. These are the "Left Hand Only" indices (#0[0-F]). The "Right Hand Only" indices are the first (#[0-F]0) commands in each sub-table. Notice also that '5' and 'D' are the most awkward finger combinations so they are used for less critical events (ideally).

Houses, Homes and Habitations

The first table does not have the Vehicle or Hermitage Types. This table contains Terms related to public and commercial buildings. These are not places where people normally live (of their own free will at any rate).

The first (Basic) sub-table contains common useful things which might otherwise be found in any of the other tables.

The fourth table has the Vehicle and Hermitage Types. This table contains Terms related to Containers. Containers may not be self-powered, but they are often involved with the movement of things. These tables also contain things which are used to create the other structures in this design (and containers for people when considered as mindless objects).

The 'Barrel' sub-table contains odd shaped (non-rectangular) containers. The 'Container' Container Contains Containers that are sturdy (this is 'ad homage' Bertrand Russell's "set of all sets" joke). The Warehouse sub-table contains (mostly stationary) conveyers, edifices and enclosures which deal with containers.