Tuesday
Jan152008
Living and Creating in Two Worlds
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 10:52AM Guest blogger, June Blanks
If you haven't peered out from your Apple, PC, Blackberry or iPhone you may want to take this opportunity to unplug from your virtual worlds and re-plug yourself into the electricity of our cities and communities from times long past.
While computers and technology consume attention, drive human interaction and distract us from our physical lives, new solutions are necessary to determine the success of community life, bricks-and-mortar businesses, and products.
In the Libert and Spector book "We Are Smarter Than Me," the authors assert: "At the ripe old age of 15 the web has already changed the human society so profoundly that historians have begun comparing the Internet with the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution."
The changes through the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution powered extreme physical make overs to the shape of the city and the experience of life for the people. The Renaissance’s artistic, scientific, and "worldly" breakthroughs propelled a movement of beautification in architecture, gardens, city plans, and promotion of the arts. The Industrial Revolution’s power and manufacturing technologies evolved the "township" into an all direction speed demon without reigns: buildings up, down and out; people moving to cities and jobs; and the railroad and automobile paving the American landscape en route.
For the past 15 years a rebirth and revolution has been underway in which innovation continues to be the order of the day. We must live and create in the digital and real world: two places that must work in tandem.
If you are inclined to look in on our cities of the Digital Age, keep your mind peeled to how your business and community can benefit from innovative changes to the city, to bricks-and-mortar business, and the experience. How will we achieve this? By focusing our energy on refining, rather than growing outward and building more and more. Part of the solution will be to infill these landscapes with rich, textured, rewarding, and responsible ideas – to plan, provide, and advance a world that brings all of the great elements of this age into focus and into play.
In the Libert and Spector book "We Are Smarter Than Me," the authors assert: "At the ripe old age of 15 the web has already changed the human society so profoundly that historians have begun comparing the Internet with the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution."
The changes through the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution powered extreme physical make overs to the shape of the city and the experience of life for the people. The Renaissance’s artistic, scientific, and "worldly" breakthroughs propelled a movement of beautification in architecture, gardens, city plans, and promotion of the arts. The Industrial Revolution’s power and manufacturing technologies evolved the "township" into an all direction speed demon without reigns: buildings up, down and out; people moving to cities and jobs; and the railroad and automobile paving the American landscape en route.
For the past 15 years a rebirth and revolution has been underway in which innovation continues to be the order of the day. We must live and create in the digital and real world: two places that must work in tandem.
If you are inclined to look in on our cities of the Digital Age, keep your mind peeled to how your business and community can benefit from innovative changes to the city, to bricks-and-mortar business, and the experience. How will we achieve this? By focusing our energy on refining, rather than growing outward and building more and more. Part of the solution will be to infill these landscapes with rich, textured, rewarding, and responsible ideas – to plan, provide, and advance a world that brings all of the great elements of this age into focus and into play.
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