Creations of human artifice In the twenty-first century, the question most of us ask when disaster strikes is not "How could God let that happen?" but "Who screwed up?" This is a salutary development: We take responsibility for the world we live in. Whether or not our world is the best of all possible worlds, it is a world we have made for ourselves. We live in an engineered landscape, on an engineered planet. Our cities and farms, our dwellings and vehicles, our power plans and communication networks—these are all creations of human artifice. If we don't like it here, we have only ourselves to blame. Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape humanityinfrastructuretechnologydisaster
When it goes wrong Kris: It's not my fault when it goes wrong. Jeff: Yes it is. Shane Carruth, Upstream Color lovedisaster
Time and space Tones appear placed and directed predominantly in time from before to now to later. Their juxtaposition in a musical composition is perceived within a prescribed sequence only. Horizontally, the tones follow each other, perhaps not in a straight line, but of necessity in a prescribed order and only in 1 direction – forward. Tones heard earlier fade, and those farther back disappear, vanish. We do not hear them backward. Colors appear connected predominantly in space. Therefore, as constellations they can be seen in any direction and at any speed. And as they remain, we can return to them repeatedly and in many ways. This remaining and not remaining, or vanishing and not vanishing, shows only 1 essential difference between the fields of tone and color. The accuracy of perception in one field is matched by the durability of retention in the other, demonstrating a curious reversal in visual and auditory memory. Josef Albers, Interaction of Color It will not stand still to be pointed at