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Oct 7, 2001
Did we once have an ability
to build the good which has
been lost?
Before the car?
Before mass-production?
Before the masses became the middle-classes?
It often seems this way.
The Victorian houses on
the hills of San Francisco
are almost universally
worshipped.
The things built from
the 50s on are either hated
or damned with faint praise. Practical
Economical
But the Victorians themselves
were the result of a mass industry
cranking out standardized redwood
gingerbread for architects to NOWHERE_VICTORIANS
choose from, the invention of the
"balloon frame" house...
It was also the result of many
rapidly shifting popular fashions,
e.g. the Italiante fad followed
by the Prince Ann.
So what's different?
If we've lost something,
what did we lose?
To me, the Victorian holds
out some hope that it is
possible to build something
worth having without
rejecting *all* of modern
industrial technology.
The villain of the story
is not technology.
It might be
government.
It might be the
financial structure.
It might even be something
as simple as a matter of
taste, a fad for junk...
In some ways that's
a problematic
thought, but in
others it's also
quite hopeful.
When the sleepers
wake, what new world
will they build?
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