My bedside table has a stack of books this high, many tossed my way by my husband, Steve, whose near-addiction to Amazon has put me on a first name basis with the UPS guy.
I pulled a book out the other night that seems relevant to Libby’s globalism-in-the-wind comment and Doug’s regionalism questions.
It’s The Human Web: A Bird’s-eye View of World history by J.R. McNeill and William H. McNeill, father and son historians.
I’m wading in to the book and picked up the following from the first chapter. Basically, the McNeill’s offer a retelling of human history that says human interactions have always formed a kind of “worldwide web” and that history is the story of the ebb and flow of these increasingly complex and larger webs.
Here’s their take on today:
“At present human society is one huge web of cooperation and competition, sustained by massive flows of information and energy. How long these flows, and this web, might last is an open question.”
I don’t see our web imploding any time soon but it’s interesting to think that it might.
Meanwhile, I’m off to see some of the region’s burgeoning photography web, now reaching its tentacles out all over the place in venues like Abington Art Center, Swarthmore’s List Gallery, Lehigh, Temple/Tyler, ADM gallery, Art Alliance — and that’s just a few.
Is it me or are there now more venues for photography and more photographers working here than ever before?
