online:23 July 2008 modified: 22, 23, July, 19 August 2008 22 July 2008 a summer afternoon
and a new paradigm, perhaps
...a warm afternoon by pond 2... i'm feeling as if on holiday (which i never am... or perhaps i am always)... watching the rippled surface of the pond - it seems to be moving endlessly from northeast to southwest...
...the trees have begun to release flower fragments... that float in the breeze... and leaves, already yellow or brown, that fall almost vertically...
...this is a nice part of the season in which it is easy to relax or go to sleep... or just to watch a seagull... or a cloud...
...and now the wind seems to have changed direction... for the ripples are moving from the southeast to the northwest... or is the moving pattern on the pond surface the result of a commotion by water birds?...
...time to take a drink and to continue walking...
...i've come to the outdoor cafe with its atmosphere of leisure and service - wealthy and educated people served by others, less wealthy but also educated... part of the social changes of the 1980s (the time President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher, and the revival of conservatism - the first time in my life when the liveliest ones were attracted to the political right, and not only to the left)... the young man who served me said he is not a student but a photographer, and presently filling an economic gap...
...and now i receive a text message, in silence... the modern equivalent of the telegram, or of the personal letter once carried by a servant (later by a specialist postman)... but now via the mobile phone (an automatic blend of both telephone and telegram which works because there is a small computer in each phone)... these changes, physically small yet profound, are already accepted by almost everyone... though sometimes grumbled at for their secondary weakness, or social newness, or their cost...
...i've decided today to restart my life anew - rethinking what used to be called the future but has now become the status quo (or the new, as realised, being considerably different from what was hoped for or predicted)...
...and now to re-arrange my actions, accordingly, while taking advantage of every 'socio-technical change'* (as i used to call it before it happened) that has now become the norm...
*pages 41, 71 and 83 of Design Methods, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester 1980, 1980, New York 1992...
...one such change that reached me today is the Paradigm Workbook** (instructions and hints for the care and conservation of personal digital archives issued by a working group from the Bodleian Library in Oxford in collaboration with the John Rylands Library in Manchester)... i think it is going to change my life as well as to conserve the pre-digital and digital residues of my past... (and in this development i note and like the collaboration of two scholarly libraries in letting the impersonal support the personal and the old support the new!)
**Paradigm: Workbook on Personal Digital Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford 2007. ISBN: 11 85124 307 0. The principal authors are Susan Thomas, Renhart Gittens, Janette Martin, Fran Baker. Published online as: Online Paradigm Workbook. URL: http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/url.html
...and now i'm the last to leave this outdoor cafe - all the tables but mine are cleared and i suppose it's time to return home...
before midnight:
...yes, today has indeed been a holiday (as well as a day of caring for the new)...
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