[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking. Baren Digest Saturday, 21 March 1998 Volume 02 : Number 101 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Bull Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 13:23:09 +0900 Subject: [Baren 491] Re: Gardening ... Matt wrote, > ... on the 'Net might be created little backwaters > and 'fertile gardens', even amidst what seems to be a lot of confusion and > advertising and time-consuming junk. I think that all the 'confusion' is an important part of what the 'net is. Think of an analogy with your daily newspaper - it is full of what to you is mostly 'junk' - advertising, noise, stories about things far removed from your interests and life. And yet if you could press a button and have your newspaper 'customized' so that nothing but stories directly related to your life were included, I think you would find that such a newspaper would gradually cease to become either useful or interesting to you. > Defining the garden limits from the surrounding fields: this > wall 'makes' the garden. Putting up a wall and making an isolated 'garden' may have its benefits (tasty vegetables or easy communication about woodblock prints), but continued isolation is neither beneficial ... nor desirable ... nor healthy. That very story that you pointed us to - the one about the influence of Japanese prints on Van Gogh - is all about taking down walls, not putting them up. The 'net in this case is no different from your local library or bookstore - it's full of absolute junk, everywhere you look. Yet I think such places are just about the most important tools that civilization supplies. And the 'net is (or will be ...) the library to end all libraries ... And just like every good library that I have ever been in, there are plenty of quiet corners in which one can sit and read through the treasures one finds ... Dave P.S. By the way, Matt has been doing some planting in the [Baren] garden, and his first contribution to the Encyclopedia went up a couple of days ago. (It's in the section on making a print 'With' or 'Without' a keyblock ...) ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V2 #101 ***************************