From Arcadia to Zeus: my first year on the Web
The twentieth century's cultural landscape
Chair's closing address
Tom Worthington
ACS Canberra Branch Conference: MULITNET'95
Et in Arcadia egoAnonymous
The Roman writer Cicero termed what we would call the cultural landscape a second nature (alteram naturam). This was a landscape of bridges, roads, harbours, fields - in short, all the elements which men and women introduce into the physical world to make it more habitable, to make it serve their purposes.Hunt 1992
Introduction
John Hunt in his "Gardens and the picturesque: studies in the history of landscape architecture", argues that English landscape architects of the 18th century, notably Lancelot "Capability" Brown, designed what now considered the "natural" English countryside. How we think of city design, as well as the countryside was influenced by these designers. The theme of this talk is that in building the bridges and roads of the InfoBahn we must act as the architects of the cultural landscape of our future society.The landscape of information services we lay out now will become the "natural" environment in which our culture will be expressed. We must take as much care with each hypertext link and page, as "Capability" Brown took with trees and water, to create something for the future.
I started my first year on the Web with a personal account of holiday, involving "Arcadia" and ended it preparing the Defence Department's home page. So this is "A" for Arcadia to "Z" for Zeus (the god of war)...
A is for Arcadia
- A play by Tom Stoppard
- Theme mixes:
- Landscape architecture of the era of "Capability" Brown (who designed the grounds of Blenheim Palace)
- Mathematics: With a character based on the Byron's wife Annabella Millbanke, mother of Augusta Ada
- Walter Burley Griffin's design for Canberra by owes much to this period of landscape architecture
- Canberra Theatre will present Aracdia in November
B to Y
- Branch Conference 1995 - ACS Canberra
- Community Access TV
- European holiday
- Development Division - ACT Government Economic
- Francisco - San: Australian-American Chamber of Commerce
- Government - ACT
- Information Industry Association - Australian
- Minute - Australia This
- Photos of Down by the Lake with Liz and Phil
- Regulation of Bulletin Board Systems - Senate Submission
- Special Broadcasting Service
- Tourism Commission ACT
- Victorian Branch Conference 1995 - Photographic report from ACS
- World Computer Congress - 14'th (IFIP'96)
Z is for Zeus
Key Issues
- What have we wrought?
- How can we make it natural?
Next Steps
- It is your job to make it.
- Lets meet again here for IFIP'96 4 September 1996
Questions and Thanks
- Thanks to the ACS, the Defence Department and networking community
- Questions?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anonymous, "Et in Arcadia ego - And I too in Arcadia" from the Oxford Book of English Quotation, Oxford University Press, 1979
Hunt, John Dickson. "Gardens and the picturesque: studies in the history of landscape architecture", Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992. Introduction