Yolanda Gaytan and I run a company, More Than Construction, Inc.  I am an architect and a builder.  We have a web page with contact info at:

 

 

I’m going to write about the things we are doing and what I think about them.  I will look for perspective on our times and our work and I will share what I find with those who read this.

 

When I was a kid in high school, Marshall McLuhan was a bit of a point of interest.  It was fun to try to peer into his world, or our world as he saw it.  The medium is the message, he said.

 

That was 1970.  NASA had a gymnasium sized room full of computer cabinets that to the best of my knowledge, had less memory, less data storage, and no where near the computational capability of the laptop I write on.  There were three national television networks, no cable and no internet.

 

It is amazing how some people can see so far ahead, when the clues are so faint.

 

When I was in college I spent my 5th year of architectural school in Florence.   Among the many cutting edge Italian designers and studios of the time (1976) there was one called Superstudio and they were to me, one of the futurists.  They were using their design skills to envision what the future would be like, how design would make it more humane.

 

A good 10 years before the internet, they envisioned a grid, shown as graph paper like line-work superimposed on pastoral scenery.  At the intersections of the grid you would find sustenance.  Whatever you needed in life, where ever you were, you could plug in and get it.  The mantra of the time, “Tune in, turn on, drop out,” was a cul-de-sac.  The road ahead was endless and interconnected.

 

And so the future of my childhood arrived and it is dazzling.  Mankind has found new tools with amazing capabilities for good or evil.  I like to think that blogging, wiki’s, satellite mapping, the internet, are engines for a good and better future.  But there is not unanimity on this.  It’s pretty hard to manage or control what people think when information is freely flowing and accessible.  I think this is emerging as a profound tension of our time.

 

But here lies a free space.  I will try to make good use of it.