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he Cooper Hewitt’s [http://www.cooperhewitt.org/
] October 1976 International exhibition Aspects of Design; conceived by Hans Hollein
and sponsored by The Johnson Wax Company [http://www.scjohnson.com/en/home.aspx]
showcased the perspectives of 10 men; a veritable calculus of vision and
imagination made tangible by a thin, bound-paper companion, which I possess;
now slightly yellowed — smelling deliciously of age, wisdom, creativity and
intellect.
Flipping through its 172 pages — titled: MAN transFORMS, I feel a rush; a high; addicted
as I am to history and time and my sense of place 35 years later.
Tasked with writing the Introduction; George Nelson [http://www.georgenelson.org/] begins:
"The real meaning of big words —
important words —are often hard to nail down.
Think of “freedom,” “democracy,” “inalienable rights,” and the range of
images they evoke.
. . . The myriad categories of
design are another example of the proliferation of specialties split off from
once-unified disciplines. Science splits
into biology, to take one field, which is then fragmented into splinters like
biophysics, biochemistry, molecular biology and so on. We live in a technological Tower of Babel
where each individual is full of answers, but unable to pass them on to anyone
outside the specialty.”
We know; and must squarely
recognize without another click — or TRANSposition of our chosen browser — the
Internet, the Web — Digital Life has transFORMED Us; upending Nelson’s 20th
Century parameters and ‘limitations’ while
catapulting us to what some have called “pro-Democracy” movements; and still others
“Citizen Occupations.”
Joan Didion; one of America’s most incisive and exacting
writers became quite famous [and remains so today] by reporting on what she
observed:
"Where are we heading, they
asked it in all the television and radio studios. They asked it in New York and Los Angeles and
they asked it in Boston and Washington and they asked it in Dallas and Houston
and Chicago and San Francisco. Sometimes
they made eye contact as they asked it. Sometimes they closed their eyes as
they asked it. Quite often they wondered
not just where we were heading but where we were heading “as Americans,” or “as
concerned Americans,” or as “American women,” or on one occasion “as the
American guy and the American woman.” [On The Road, 1977]
Didion began her ‘real-time’ 2006 narrative: The
Year of Magical Thinking in this way:
Life changes fast.
Life changes in the
instant.
@ Issue in 1976 —
As the World Wide Web insists it remains today—
Change ∞ .
Drilling Down:
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