SPATIAL HUMANITIES

I’m doing some research on the supposedly new discipline of Spatial Humanities and Deeping Mapping. There was a fascinating article in the New York times recently on what the discipline can reveal about Gettysburg and the Salem Witch Hunts. In fact, it is not a new field at all, and a natural extension of the linking of both established disciplines and modern technologies, inherent in exactly what you are reading right now, on the Internet. Perhaps all bloggers and readers can now see themselves as ‘Spatial Humanitarians’! At the risk of being a total bore about the past, it was something I was also thinking and writing about three years ago, caught imaginatively between London and New York, time zones, and various Spatial Inhumanities, and it certainly rearranged my own spiritual and head space. I personally think we are always caught between imagination and percieved reality, versus what actually happens on all levels, and the human brain is of course the biggest super ‘computer’ to really touch what’s going on, or isn’t. Read BLINK. Until of course we began to build reflective virtual worlds of what happens in our hearts, minds and souls, that is now ‘online; in lots of ways. I think in certain fields we should disconnect and get into nature, sail a boat, or climb a mountain, but perhaps the maxim must remain – ‘Only Connect!’ DCD