notes from underground

While there is still some hope that it will return, we are leaving (indeed, have already left) the age of the wristwatch. It’s a pity, really, and it has broader implications: no longer do we check our wrist to ascertain our own remote, mechanically determined personal time (a subtle movement, intensely familiar and understood to mean many things depending on context). These days, we check our cellphones, our blackberries, to see a digital readout linked in to a worldwide communication infrastructure through a device designed purely to link you to other people. The movement is more invasive–try looking at your wrist, and then for comparison drawing a cellphone our of your pocket or purse, and you’ll see that I’m right– and the social nature of the device is more dramatically limiting: you can’t turn off your network without turning off time itself.

Overly dramatic, but there you have it.

I just returned from drawing class and Tealuxe, where I had one of the most fulfilling conversations of my entire time here at Brown. More on that later, still turning the ideas over in my head, but a related thought:

The statement that those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it seems misleading. I do not in any way mean to demean the study of history, but rather that history should be one of the most celebratory fields in the world: The study of humanity’s past actions doesn’t just teach us what lead to Nazism, but also contains the memories and stories of the combined sum of humanity’s success thus far in history. Perhaps a more justifiable way to phrase the point would be that those who study history are blessed with the greatest treasury of past success, and have the strongest foundation ever for the structuring of future endeavors.

To justify the title of this post, Anachromancy is my own term to indicate to myself the notion of predicting and structuring future action from the vantage point of a comprehensive view of the past. Obviously the future is created through a continual dialectic between the existing structure and new ideas, but far too often the new is overemphasized.

Therefore, history should be a required course. Next time on Nova, nodal points and the coming cultural event horizon!