Critical Studies week 7-8
Critical Studies week 7-8
Musings on a deluge of information and riding on the train...
Compare the pace of the increasing volume of information available to someone with reasonable access to modern communication technology to the changing view of the rail traveler in (citation here). The rail traveller's viewpoint is changed by moving through the world while isolated from it within a container.
The pedestrian travels at the pace of life, and notices more of the world while walking immersed. The rail passenger is passively witnessing the world changing, outside of the train, outside of themselves and therefore receive a more generalized impression of the world.
To be a pedestrian is to pay attention to the specific details of something, to get close to it and exist with it inside a common space.
To ride the train is to gain a more diffuse understanding of the landscape more of a "lay of the land" kind of thing.
Once upon a time information was limited and pedestrian. Our consumption habits were developed to handle the pace and volume of information available. This lead to a study of fine details and specifics not possible from the train of modern communication.
The question is whether our information consumption habits can evolve to suit the increasing pace and volume of information and derive understanding while sitting in a coach watching the landscape go by, unable to focus on details in the foreground.
The information train passenger:
This person has a phone, a TV, Cable, Satellite etc. and significant creative lesisure to fine tune information consumption habits from a vertical to a horizontal model.
Perhaps this is not you personally, but the frequency of this person is increasing as more and more generations are born into the situation of information quasi-omniscience. It follows that new habits of cognition will be necessary to cope, and even thrive within this increasing information awareness, because the key to information is understanding, regardless of the sources and volume of the information.
The value of information in terms of understanding/wisdom is not proportional to the volume of information but the reception and understanding of the right information, at the right time.
The reading:
Boxcar Bertha,
276-280
Seems dropping out of typical middle class life is not new to the 1960's or free love for that matter etc. (funny SE highlighted exactly the same points in class)
While there were somen hobos the lifestyle choice to ignore bourgeois life for the low budget travel life somewhat equalized women and men in SOME ways. Reflecting back on Walking after Midnight where women are disallowed to walk by themselves, the hobo people seem egalitarian by comparison. However like the hippies of the 1960s I suspect that it was still an overwhelmingly misogynist arrangement, as the women cooked, and performed other personal servitude to maintain their slim freedom. I suspect that men and women hobos were equally untouchable and that bourgeois society wanted to ignore them.
284
It warms the hackles to also realize that anti-war and anti-militarism it would seem were also not solely a 1960's phenomena either. This provides me hope that the pendulum will swing again to the left.
Walking after midnight
279
Two casts of women are apparent here. Women were compelled to trade respectability for mobility.
298
Patrilineal (new word for me with old roots)
298
The view that architecture contains within it's basic intent to control the sexuality jibes with Boxcar Bertha's open sexuality of the road.
Musings on a deluge of information and riding on the train...
Compare the pace of the increasing volume of information available to someone with reasonable access to modern communication technology to the changing view of the rail traveler in (citation here). The rail traveller's viewpoint is changed by moving through the world while isolated from it within a container.
The pedestrian travels at the pace of life, and notices more of the world while walking immersed. The rail passenger is passively witnessing the world changing, outside of the train, outside of themselves and therefore receive a more generalized impression of the world.
To be a pedestrian is to pay attention to the specific details of something, to get close to it and exist with it inside a common space.
To ride the train is to gain a more diffuse understanding of the landscape more of a "lay of the land" kind of thing.
Once upon a time information was limited and pedestrian. Our consumption habits were developed to handle the pace and volume of information available. This lead to a study of fine details and specifics not possible from the train of modern communication.
The question is whether our information consumption habits can evolve to suit the increasing pace and volume of information and derive understanding while sitting in a coach watching the landscape go by, unable to focus on details in the foreground.
The information train passenger:
This person has a phone, a TV, Cable, Satellite etc. and significant creative lesisure to fine tune information consumption habits from a vertical to a horizontal model.
Perhaps this is not you personally, but the frequency of this person is increasing as more and more generations are born into the situation of information quasi-omniscience. It follows that new habits of cognition will be necessary to cope, and even thrive within this increasing information awareness, because the key to information is understanding, regardless of the sources and volume of the information.
The value of information in terms of understanding/wisdom is not proportional to the volume of information but the reception and understanding of the right information, at the right time.
The reading:
Boxcar Bertha,
276-280
Seems dropping out of typical middle class life is not new to the 1960's or free love for that matter etc. (funny SE highlighted exactly the same points in class)
While there were somen hobos the lifestyle choice to ignore bourgeois life for the low budget travel life somewhat equalized women and men in SOME ways. Reflecting back on Walking after Midnight where women are disallowed to walk by themselves, the hobo people seem egalitarian by comparison. However like the hippies of the 1960s I suspect that it was still an overwhelmingly misogynist arrangement, as the women cooked, and performed other personal servitude to maintain their slim freedom. I suspect that men and women hobos were equally untouchable and that bourgeois society wanted to ignore them.
284
It warms the hackles to also realize that anti-war and anti-militarism it would seem were also not solely a 1960's phenomena either. This provides me hope that the pendulum will swing again to the left.
Walking after midnight
279
Two casts of women are apparent here. Women were compelled to trade respectability for mobility.
298
Patrilineal (new word for me with old roots)
298
The view that architecture contains within it's basic intent to control the sexuality jibes with Boxcar Bertha's open sexuality of the road.
posted by DanCoyote at 1:53 PM
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