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I woke up pondering my hypothetical panel discussion involving a sci-fi writer, a designer, an anthropologist, et al., and as usual realized that since I would never be in a position to convene such, I would just have to make up all the dialogue myself.
Besides, I was once at a panel of artists at the Hirshhorn wherein the heavy-duty and sobersided photographic theorists dozed and mumbled while the discussion was dominated by the highly intelligent and incisively analytical remarks of the young videographer dressed like Pippi Longstocking, best known for setting her videos to rock music. So the good lines can go to whomsoever one chooses without fear of incongruity. But you knew that already.
But since I have no skill as a novelist, I must at most observe that the situations of implicit narrative in the design scenarios I've noticed are conceptually odd; Karim Rashid is more of a realist than the late F. M. Esfandiary (a.k.a. FM-2030), who rightly said he was nostalgic for the future, since he presented his futurological manifesto for the world in the very year in which the spike in OPEC oil prices dislodged the smooth narrative of the industrialized countries and the rise of the Ayatollah dislodged the smooth narrative of progress mapped out by the Shah in Esfandiary's native country. Rashid places himself outside of local cultural narratives almost as much as Esfandiary did, but he has the advantage of operating in an already globalized situation wherein he can offer practical advice for self-reinvention to take advantage of what technology has already made possible.
Rashid's self-help book Design Your Self, aimed at an appropriately young audience, violates nearly everyone's cultural codes, since he simultaneously advises that one live in the present that is all we have (by making conscious decisions as to whether the objects with which one has surrounded oneself are accomplishing the objectives that one has chosen, or whether they are in fact retarding the accomplishment of same) and mentions that awareness of one's death is part of living in the present, and that some people are unnerved by the fact that he has already designed his coffin.
I am reminded of a host of writers with whom Rashid could have productive discussions, perhaps of benefit to both sides of the argument, but I lack the wondrous skill of those novelists for whom it is not necessary that the writer believe any of the opinions being expressed by his characters, or even that his characters appear to believe them for the purposes of the story; only that the opinions do something to advance the narrative rather than retard it. For Rashid seems most intensively concerned with keeping the narrative of culture moving, without being the kind of mindless optimist or nihilist that such types usually end up being in world history. Rashid is aware that there are reasons why what he hopes for may not happen, and I wish he had to engage in dialogue with those who are minded to find new ways to engage the past as well as the present. For it is not true that the present is all that we have; it is true that the present is the moving plane of time wherein the past and the future are continuously constructed and reconstructed.
As all of us know once we stop to think about it, so that isn't a particularly useful or profound insight.
Besides, I was once at a panel of artists at the Hirshhorn wherein the heavy-duty and sobersided photographic theorists dozed and mumbled while the discussion was dominated by the highly intelligent and incisively analytical remarks of the young videographer dressed like Pippi Longstocking, best known for setting her videos to rock music. So the good lines can go to whomsoever one chooses without fear of incongruity. But you knew that already.
But since I have no skill as a novelist, I must at most observe that the situations of implicit narrative in the design scenarios I've noticed are conceptually odd; Karim Rashid is more of a realist than the late F. M. Esfandiary (a.k.a. FM-2030), who rightly said he was nostalgic for the future, since he presented his futurological manifesto for the world in the very year in which the spike in OPEC oil prices dislodged the smooth narrative of the industrialized countries and the rise of the Ayatollah dislodged the smooth narrative of progress mapped out by the Shah in Esfandiary's native country. Rashid places himself outside of local cultural narratives almost as much as Esfandiary did, but he has the advantage of operating in an already globalized situation wherein he can offer practical advice for self-reinvention to take advantage of what technology has already made possible.
Rashid's self-help book Design Your Self, aimed at an appropriately young audience, violates nearly everyone's cultural codes, since he simultaneously advises that one live in the present that is all we have (by making conscious decisions as to whether the objects with which one has surrounded oneself are accomplishing the objectives that one has chosen, or whether they are in fact retarding the accomplishment of same) and mentions that awareness of one's death is part of living in the present, and that some people are unnerved by the fact that he has already designed his coffin.
I am reminded of a host of writers with whom Rashid could have productive discussions, perhaps of benefit to both sides of the argument, but I lack the wondrous skill of those novelists for whom it is not necessary that the writer believe any of the opinions being expressed by his characters, or even that his characters appear to believe them for the purposes of the story; only that the opinions do something to advance the narrative rather than retard it. For Rashid seems most intensively concerned with keeping the narrative of culture moving, without being the kind of mindless optimist or nihilist that such types usually end up being in world history. Rashid is aware that there are reasons why what he hopes for may not happen, and I wish he had to engage in dialogue with those who are minded to find new ways to engage the past as well as the present. For it is not true that the present is all that we have; it is true that the present is the moving plane of time wherein the past and the future are continuously constructed and reconstructed.
As all of us know once we stop to think about it, so that isn't a particularly useful or profound insight.
