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As Alex wright describes in his talk for the Long Now Foundation on this Information Age, Paul Otlet PREDICTED in 1934 the birth of the internet:






I've never thought so hard about how to create incentive for people. You all have not left my mind in over a week. i'm trying to get into your thoughts your obligations your desires your stresses your assumptions your orientations and perspectives and biases and curiosities and fears and fascinations. and i know i have no idea, but bare with me and i hope you are okay and i hope i haven't scared you and i hope this conversation doesn't end. i want to stop feeling alone. i know we can all think together. we can know things. i'm trying to be simple about this. simple simple easy accessible humble not arrogant. i don't feel superior because i'm not superior. and certainly i don't wish to be read that way even though it will inevitably happen if it has to. I don't feel somehow better than anyone reading this because i don't even really believe that i exist. or that you exist as something else. which makes things tricky sometimes...and i certainly don't think i should be getting into this because i'm going to seem crazy, but i'm pretty sure i'm not crazy and i'm trying to express all of this and the fact that i'm trying to be transparent but i don't want to explain my intention to be so. we are really just the same thing, made of the same stuff, changing our molecules all the time, my body is completely different than it was a few years ago or even months ago, i'm not made of the same stuff, i'm made of other stuff and so are you. but we're all made of star stuff (as carl sagan would say.... i should probably reference him here). so because we're not different, we can't be compared. and i am the way i am because i had to be, one thing led to another and here i am and here i am making this blog and here you are reading it after one thing led to another and made you who you are and suddenly you find yourself in hirsch's class and so do i and here we are online. and i feel so much happier when i'm not just thinking about this illusion of me myself and me.. and my sculpture and my lunch and my stuff and my things and my ass and my shoes and the next thing i wanna do. i think we need to be connected. to each other and the bigger thing too. because i believe there is a bigger thing. and we're part of it. really. as artists we can't not be connected. to the thing. and we are. and here we are. realizing how.

feel free to leave comments anywhere.

p.s. here's a place that might change some minds about design--maybe not. but i'd like to know if it does...

if you have to choose only a couple talks from this conference i recommend:
designing the human mind
new city
responsive architecture