Comments on: Railways, flash mobs and metadata

By: Charlie

Charlie — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:36:08 +0000

‘Thinking with the railways’, I like that phrase as my grandad used to work on the railways and was obsessed with how integral they were to everything… and when he retired he had a little model railway in his shed. He’d lost a hand in a factory accident, but would make little trees from washing up sponges and anything else he could find and it looked pretty good, this little world he created in a shed:)
George’s dialogue with a poet online does show the best of this medium connecting us…. and how did anyone ever find stuff out to research a project before now? But how much do we distract ourselves with as well – I’m an online newspaper junkie and click for updates every few hours if I’m working online all day……

By: Jay Bernard

Jay Bernard — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:09:47 +0000

I find train journeys amazing for coming up with ideas, but disastrous for productivity. Someone, probably whoever wrote The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, said that looking out of the window of a car is exactly the same as watching television. I think the same of a train window, and a plane window – in fact, any moving window. You’re absolutely right to compare it with the digital age; what we have now is a static window and a moving virtual world. Scott McCloud has some great lectures about this on YouTube, with specific reference to the shift from print based media to digital media and our dependence on vision…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXYckRgsdjI

If you skip to 10.00 you get his very swift and interesting history about space / time / creativity.

By: Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:51:48 +0000

I used to write on trains when I was inclined to write independent poems (as opposed to verse novels). But since I’ve moved more heavily into fiction and I don’t travel with a laptop I find that trains are good for editing my prose. I never create on them anymore. But I love the way a good train journey, one that passes through miles of countryside, can empty my mind and give me a sense of peace. (Empty or very quiet carriage preferable!).

I agree that the internet need not be a dead, inhuman space for all the reasons you outlined. But certain aspects of it, like Facebook, can be very misleading. People project a persona and develop ‘friendships’ that are not necessarily genuine.