Keith the last two posts I've sent to Futurework have gotten through only to the people on the list that I CCed. So this may be only between the two of us.
Questions: 1. Who's going to sing all of that choral music if you don't have cities? 2. Cities serve as hot beds of ideas. The Internet is an adjunct but it will never substitute for sex with us real folks, anymore than movies or CDs can replace real audience/performer exchange. Note how afraid people on this list are to examining seriously the claims of the fanatics that blew up a segment of the city. 3. Communication by writing makes people "kinesics" dumb. Already the video phones and the talk news networks are teaching us to ignore facial micro-movements which carry as much information for the non-white world as does the words themselves. The "white" world is married to the ultra-simplicities of Math and Physics. Note the term used by the "white world" is not simplicity but "elegant", either way it can be entered into a computer but no such thing can be done with the complexities of Chromatic harmony. That is why I have to have this new computer with all of that memory. There is an extensive discussion of such things in Edward T. Hall and the writings of Clifford Geertz. Hall uses the terms European Americans instead of "White World.". Also note that the scientists in the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study where Geertz is the head of the anthropology section refused to allow him to test them on the "culture" of science. So in short I think the pencil pushers and number crunchers are once more getting confusing short term trends with long term needs. Frank Lloyd Wright already explored this in his Usonia writings years ago and came up with the same issue. Human contact is needed and the less of that you have the dumber the population becomes in the disciplines that have to do with complex communication. Academics are fine but those are learned in a few short years. Life comes afterwards. I also believe that is the reason for all of the major triads in Minimalist modern music with only an occasional change. The audience needs that much time to HEAR the chord. If it moves to fast or changes come to quickly today's audiences don't "get it." Cities change all of that unless they are mono-cultural or mono religious cities like the two in Saudie Arabia that would like for us all to become like the life and death simplicities of the desert. Yes I'm still angry about that. This is my city and I think an air base nearby and serious governmental standardization and contorl on air traffic control would have stopped all of that instead of this Private Enterprise idiocy. Instead we get PCs at home but chaos in the air. And then we breed economists like locusts. But the city has survived and it will continue past this plague. REH ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 3:38 AM Subject: Appendix: Distance-working/Low-rise buildings > As soon as I sent my previous message to this List, I downloaded the latest > edition of yesterday's New York Times to find the following article which > begins thus: > > <<<< > Many Once-Thriving Cities Are Suddenly Hurting > By Mary Williams Walsh > > The Economic Fallout > Sept. 11, most people agree, changed everything - including, it now > appears, the economic map of the United States. The suicide attacks of 19 > terrorists are not only tipping the economy into a recession, they have > also scrambled the business landscape in places thousands of miles from the > destruction. Many cities and regions that, in America's gathering economic > gloom, had strong growth prospects just three weeks ago no longer do. > > "The parts of the country that were holding up well before the attack are > going to be nailed by this," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at > Economy.com, a forecasting concern in West Chester, Pa., that analyzed the > attacks' implications for Money & Business. . . . . > >>>> > > Keith Hudson > > ___________________________________________________________________ > > Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org> > 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England > Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > ________________________________________________________________________
