This morning getting to the SD Forum I had an adventure getting there. I was going to take the train but missed it. Got to the light rail but missed the train that was in the station…then got the next one. Got of one stop to late – Great American instead of Old Ironsides. Then walked the wrong direction across the Great America parking lot.
this wide open space was nice…you could see the myst around the edges of the mountains. It was overcast with the sun none-the-less shining through. The air was moist and i was listening to my i-pod. I thought about how early settlers here might have felt looking towards the horizon. “a promised land” of abundant fertile soil – the opportunity to plan trees and grow fruit. I felt sad for the trees that I know had been ripped up to make the parking lot I was walking over.
I got back out onto the street. Very wide full of cars streaming off the freeway. A massive scale. There were no people on the sidewalks with me. I thought about how this landscape built for cars shaped the thinking of the people here. The technology developed in this valley is spreading “everywhere”. What does it mean that it comes from a place that is so car-based on such a large scale almost trans-human. The scale here reminded me of the scale of the government buildings in DC – massive.
Can we build technology that is rooted in community that serves the human scale and has life serving values at its roots.