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Making networks visible

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Signs and traces of networks

Seeing the near in the far (Belfast, Maine)

Gathering and linking (tower house at Seaside (Leon Krier))

"Even if I grant that there are indeed new dispersed and mobile places, wouldn't you also say that architects and planners need to create new central nodes?"

"It would be relaxing. But it's more important to make some signs and traces of those networks visible along those miles of suburbs and malls. A big Central node could end up pretending it wasn't on the net. You should get your architects to figure out how to gather and link at the same time. We spirits are working it out."

"What's the secret?"

"There's no secret. It's a matter of awareness. You have to mirror the far in the near, and see how the near depends on the far. My Buddhist colleagues have been doing that for a long time: connection, interdependence."

"Like those temples that include miniatures of famous pilgrimage routes?"

"Doctrines, too. We Shinto kami have never travelled well. But when the Buddhist spirits showed up in Japan they had already become quite cosmopolitan. They'd done the 'network' thing over in China: Indra's net, 'the whole world reflected in a drop of water,' that sort of thing."