online: 5 may 2004

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28 april 2004 changes in the culture


15:18 Indoor cafe. A cool misty day with low cloud (pale grey, almost white) through which sunlight passes to illuminate trees, buildings, people, everything - without shadows...

...and today, after visiting Bruce Archer, perhaps the only other person to have lived the same kind of life as myself*, I feel that my past is illuminated also.

The cafe where I'm writing this was noisy with the sound of many conversations reflected from hard surfaces but suddenly it is quiet - diners have left and afternoon tea people are only just arriving.

I am sitting here as if in a pause, perhaps between phases of life - between a past of being half-blinded by immediate circumstance and a future in which I may be able act with wider perception - though with weaker means than formerly...

As I pause to drink tea I see a man of about 35 bottle-feeding a new baby - I doubt if I ever saw that in the last century. It seems to me a big change in the culture and I imagine it foreshadows others, far greater, in the upbringing and formation of children - and thus in the nature of people. Nature = nurture?

16:54 Sitting by pond 1 and looking at the white sky reflected on the water surface. There are few people about, after rain, and most of the trees are now in leaf. There is someone speaking loudly into a mobile phone about 40 metres away and I can hear some of the words but I can't understand them - are they in another language?... another change in the physical culture - seeming large to those who remember former times but small to those who have adapted to it.



*Bruce and I both worked to connect science and art, engineering and industrial design, and in the teaching of others to do likewise, under the name of design research. We seldom met and only today do I realise how much we have in common.



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