Freedomless freedom The beauty of kasuri is received as a gift. As long as the laws of nature are upheld, the beauty of kasuri remains intact. This demonstrates the curious principle that the artisan is deprived of technical freedom but works in the freedom of nature. In this sense, kasuri can be said to be created in a state of freedomless freedom. Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Kasuri freedomconstraintsnaturemaking
Technological middle age In the automobile's technological middle age, it is hard, if not impossible, to tune or repair one's own vehicle. Technical standardization of cars has occurred, and with it the elimination of the user's access to the machine itself. At the same time, the infrastructures that once served those who did not use automobiles atrophied and vanished. Some may say they were deliberately starved out. Railways gave way to more and more roadways. And thus a technology that had been perceived to liberate its users began to enslave them. Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology technologyfreedominfrastructure
Why We Build the Wall A Song by Anaïs Mitchell genius.com What do we have that they should want? We have a wall to work upon We have work and they have none And our work is never done And the war is never won The enemy is poverty And the wall keeps out the enemy And we build the wall to keep us free That’s why we build the wall We build the wall to keep us free So that its destruction cannot begin workfreedomcapitalism
A World Where Things Only Almost Meet Recall that great line from Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths. Only, here, it’s some lonely postal worker—or a geography Ph.D. driven mad by student debt—out mapping the frayed edges of the world, wearily noting every new dead-end and cul-de-sac in a gridded notebook, diagramming loops, sketching labyrinths and mazes, driving empty streets all day on a quest for something undefinable, some answer to why the world’s patterns have gone so wrong. A self-diverging world, where things only almost meet. Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG www.bldgblog.com How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths urbanismgeometrydystopia