Re: why Berlin?

On 13 May 2011, at 10:28, Daniel Harris wrote:

> There is an unfortunate philosophy pervading through society at the moment that we've got to destroy what exists before we can then build our new, beautiful, better world. And I see all the children are picking up: that in order to solve a problem you have to "take it out". It's unfortunate because what we see if an incredible amount of destruction in the name of building a better world. Also by the time we have destroyed the old world we are so exhausted that we haven't got the energy to build anything better. ;-/
> 
> But, that is not what's going on here! We are build better tools for a better world! So, let's just "accentuate the positive" in the language we use. Let's just describe what we are actually doing. We're building a better world.

Ah that is to misunderstand the Berlin wall. Its fall was not an act of destruction. It was about the end of a futile confrontation between titans that were set to destroy the world. As you can imagine it was not the Berlin wall that kept them physically apart. If you go to Berlin you will see the wall is not that thick and it was painted with interesting graffiti http://www.berlinwallart.com/ . No the Wall was a state of mind, that made each side think they had the answer to all the worlds problem, that all had to be done one way. It was a symbol of non-communication. Tearing the wall down was an act of pacifism, not of violence. In fact right after the fall of the wall, people rushed over and started kissing each other. 


> The old world will wither, die and rot from disuse and neglect. No need to break it. Let's not focus our attention on the old world at all. Every look back is and moment lost in looking forward. Let's keep our focus on the new world we are building.
> 
> I don't see any of us with a hammer is our hands. I see us all using tools for creation. I am not breaking anything. I building.

A hammer is a good tool. But we come with all kinds of other tools of course. Power connectivity tools that can link everything together. 

> 
> So, please, let's buck the trend of solving problems by "taking the bad stuff out". We're not doing that anyway. We're breaking nothing. We're building everything!
> 
> Get it? ;-)

yes, but now put all that in one tweet! :-)

> 
> I told you I'm a bit of a stickler for language and the psychological effects there of. ;-)
> 
> Cheers Daniel
> 
> On 12 May 2011, at 18:41, Markus Sabadello wrote:
>> Hi Henry, yes, nice analogy :)
>> 
>> Personally I consider the "breaking down the walls" part the straightforward first step.
>> The second step is then to build new communication patterns and services that we can't really imagine yet in today's centralized and homogeneous social networks.
>> 
>> Markus
>> -- 
>> blog: http://danubechannel.com
>> phone: +43 664 3154848
>> 
>> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
>>> This could be the tagline on the top of the http://d-cent.org/fsw2011/ page
>>> 
>>> Berlin is where the first wall fell. Join us there to start breaking down all the others.
>>> 
>>> Henry
>>> 
>>> PS. see the picture in http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2008/Papers/MSNWS/
> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/

Received on Friday, 13 May 2011 08:48:11 UTC