I doubt whether your first quote refers to travel - actually it doesn't in
my book of quotes, it's filed under mapping: something we do when halted,
balancing the terrain and its representations, not even thinking of travel,
as on a list like this that i just joined and have seen only glimpses of.
I'm trying to map it and welcome any smart guidance as to what kind of
troubled minds are sharing what kind of troubled interests here. (Finally,
it's still a Documenta hosted list, now isn't it? See?) It's the story of
information: how to get a grip on new territory. Fast. How to get into the
driver seat and change the road - or at least direction. We can't anymore?
I cherish the hope that those who built the Net territory/infrastructure
overlooked one or two possibilities of it, that are happily recognized by
some unruly types (but it's not the hackers, the nerds, the artists, the
new academics, the gurus, the kids, etc., so far)
Maps (even the fast ones) serve well in static systems, territories
unchanged. But imagine mapping change: then the map becomes the territory,
unless its worthless.
The Internet/www is the map is the territory and we are on it changing
directions.
Jouke Kleerebezem Amsterdam
PS
Most urgent question in my mapping this list effort, before opening all
those promissing threads on its website: is it a discussion list or yet
another new academics lecturing opportunity?
PS2
Are we who live in the present doomed never to experience autonomy, never
to stand for one moment on a bit of land ruled only by freedom? Are we
reduced either to nostalgia for the past or nostalgia for the future?
--Hakim Bey, 'T.A.Z.'
...home is represented, not by a house, but by a practice, or by a set of
practices. Everyone has his own. These practices, chosen and not imposed,
offer in their repetition, transient as they may be in themselves, more
permanence, more shelter than any lodging. Home is no longer a dwelling but
the untold story of a life being lived. At its most brutal, home is no more
than one's name.
(...)
Today, as soon as very early childhood is over, the house can never again
be home, as it was in other epochs. This century, for all its wealth and
with all its communication systems, is the century of banishment.
--John Berger, 'And our faces, my heart, brief as photos'
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