For those anxiously awaiting my scribblings on spirituality and experience, and for those who wrote so many outstanding Comments regarding past entries (all published this evening), thank you for your patience.
No, I did not have a desert epiphany and get singed by a Burning Bush, ascend to heaven on my steed, or assume a solitary perch atop a column to contemplate the world. (I did have a run-in with a scorpion on the back step, however. Contrary to Carl Stephenson's classic short story, "Leiningen Versus the Ants," in this case the skinny arachnid won, chasing me back indoors.)
The universe intervened, but not in such dramatic fashion. First, I contracted an enormous cold in Santa Monica that fully bloomed only after I landed in Tucson. What an irony, to be sneezing and snuffling in such a sunny place. Then, on leaving the airport, my G4 Powerbook took a tumble and ended up completely whacked. (I'm using a borrowed laptop, a PC [holding nose], to post this entry. It doesn't have Ecto on it and so is unfit for blogging.) Fortunately, I brought along my G3 Powerbook as a precaution. Once new memory for it arrives, giving it the semblance of a modern Mac, I'll share with you the first installment of what is turning out to be a complex and highly entertaining story of humankind, spirituality, soul food -- I mean, food for the soul, and experience. It's more than I bargained for.
In the meantime, my cold's gone, we've had our first seasonal lightning storm -- Tucson is the world's Lightning Capital! -- and I'm thinking seriously about exporting my experience-design practice and me to the Oresund region, where Denmark and Sweden are connected by the new Oresund Bridge. It's like Silicon Valley all over again, only with better food, real seasons, and an information economy at least a generation ahead of "Web 2.0": one based solely on innovation and creativity. Ah yes, and did I remark on the natural beauty of the inhabitants?
All this and more when the chips show up and I return. See you online...!
(Image: Weather Underground)
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
