Martin Bernal died on June 9 in Ithaca NY – Martin Bernal obituary – The Guardian He was controversial, unnecessarily. His basic idea was that Classicists in the nineteenth century distorted the history of Greek antiquity by denying the rich and intense connections among the people and cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, favoring instead an…
the shape of history
Enzo’s Alfa
Our class continues with its exploration of the nature of the historical significance of artifacts. Case study — cars. This evening Jon (Feiber) welcomed us to his wonderful collection to consider the cases of a 1914 Packard, a 1931 Alfa Romeo, and a 1960 Maserati. I couldn’t resist – here I am in the 1931…
design as exchange
Design values in globalism – the vitality of return and exchange Here is my commentary on the design exhibition currently running at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam [Link]. My previous commentaries – [Link] [Link] Design Column #4 The circle is round ‘The World is Deglobalizing at Breakneck Speed’ – so read the title of a…
historical significance
Does it matter – historically speaking? Just what does that mean? I am helping David Kelley, Jon Feiber, Reilly Brennan, Cliff Nass and our friends in the Revs Program with a class that is exploring the nature of historical significance. In d.school style we are asking the class to come up with the answers. Just…
Ben Cullen
On the anniversary of the untimely and sudden death of Ben Cullen in 1995. [Link] [Link] [Link] I dedicated my book, The Archaeological Imagination [Link], published in April, to Ben. It is seventeen years today since he died. Uncanny. I wonder what I would say to him about the book, that might reveal how much…
an archaeology of the contemporary past
Today I’m in the Clark Center at Stanford, hub of the Bio-X Program – bioengineering and more. Steve Quake (Stanford Bioengineering and Applied Physics) is hosting a meeting of The Human Document Project – [Link] With us are Laura Welcher (Long Now Foundation), Tim D. White (Palaeoanthropology, Berkeley), Michael Fischer (Anthropological Sciences, Canterbury, UK), Andreas…
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