Dear Keith,
I think I can assume why you mention Bob the Builder. Clearly, the character is relevant to design as an example of the financial value of branding in toy design.
But why Heraclitus? Wikipedia tells me all of his writing is now lost, so that he survives only in quoted scraps, many of which were apparently invented in later ages. Are you citing him, therefore, as an illustration of the sad loss of memory and how writers to this list must accept their own passing mortality in an age made ephemeral by the frailty of digital media?
Or do you want to take the scraps at face value, and discuss how one can never step into the same river twice? Do you see that as related to a McLuhan figure/ground discussion of context and meaning? Or maybe it's an ecological point about habitat change? A political point about the impermanence of degrading US infrastructure? The challenge of defining the changeable nature of the self who does the stepping?
Just asking,Heidi
From: Keith Russell <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, July 9, 2018 7:25 AM
Subject: Re: On the Topic of Topics
Dear Heidi,
Sure, the dignity of teaching might be equally called for along with naughty frolicking.
There have been many learning/teaching moments, over the years, on the list. How do we make such moments more common?
By asking we indicate interest. If a student were to presume that an old folk would not frolick except with meaning, then a student might ask the meaning not of the frolicking as such, but of something they noticed in the frolicking. For example, why would I mention Heraclitus along with Zeno and Bob the Builder? Old folks tend to make statements and answer questions.
cheers
keith
________________________________
<[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Heidi Overhill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: On the Topic of Topics
Dear Keith,
In that case, then perhaps the list serve might precisely as what you describe as "the job of teachers" —— as an aid to both the hard-working delving students, and the naughty frolickers?
What I find curiously absent from posts here are precisely the kind of recommendations you mention, to Heraclitus and Bob. More useful than bare name-dropping would be the naming of a particular piece of writing —— a toehold where someone with the germ of an idea might discover themselves reflected in the thinking of others, and gain an introduction to their fellow travellers of the ages.
Because design affects everything, there is nothing you can read that does not matter to design.
What this means is that none of us can possibly have read it all, but the collective reading of the people on this list might come close to that ideal. It would be nice to see that unique awareness brandished constructively.
Thank you,Heidi
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