[limitation vs. exclusion vs. distinction]
[rotherbaum] is a borough belonging to the district of Eimsbüttel, which abuts on the west side of the Alster. It’s determined by it’s contrasts and it’s direct and indirect borders.
P R O C E S S I N G
step one: solely observation | first impressions
everyone of us walked alone through the streets of rotherbaum, time 3-4 hours
characteristics and observation: contrasts on the one hand “Grindelviertel”, University of Hamburg with lively places of students and ambient one the other hand a lot of streets and avenues with huge villas of wealthy people and empty, sterile, lifeless atmosphere at the Alster site are private schools, hotels, embassy located
though every society is isolated – boundaries
macro- and micro-boundaries
independently from each other we observed boundaries: Dennis: barriers in the streets, blocked streets at the villas located at the Alster, embassies, historical deportation of jews –> social exclusion Karen: marking properties of flowerbeeds, different types of apartment buildings (villas, simpler builded apartments), places inviting to a collective get-together are not used Lisa: Streets as limitations (Rothenbaumchaussee + Harvestehuder Weg), as imagine wall of different “types” of society Limiting the own personalities because of desires of belonging to specific societies
step two: exchange of impressions / common denominator / focus / topic
social borders – common togetherness of all the different population groups (students, employees, affluent people) could be possible, local preconditions to interact with each other exist, but every group is living on their own in their own zone
how can social boundaries be defined?
parallel societies are formed / every group lives in their own kind of cosmos
why is it like that? are they afraid of people of different groups? boundaries as a human need (protection/privacy/property)?
limitation vs. exclusion vs. distinction
what kind of borders exist? digital borders? Wifi? landmarks? facile borders? manhole covers?
what will happen, if there are no borders anymore?
limitless up to a certain limit
step three: conductive ideas
there are objective boundaries in [rotherbaum]: barriers, gates, fences, hedges, prohibition signs, cameras, etc.
what boundaries do find in [rotherbaum] which are not visible? Are there any mechanisms that exclude other people or things? Who is excluded on the internet and who has to exclude themselves from each other?
the most powerful boundaries could be the on-and offline modus, adblock boxes our way through unsafe webpages and passwords functions as virtual keys to control accesses
government control the access to critical media
the human being has to prove that she/he is not a robot to get access to specific content
Does this exclude robots? For a example an artificial intelligence that has the urge to learn something new? Or can those a.i. systems solve those capture tasks?
What’s next?
The diversity of the district may lead to the situation that there will be many boundaries and regulation that determines the cohabitation of people. In a digital world the boundaries become blurry or disappear increasingly. The current location loose its importance also; we post a blog entry from anywhere to present our studies so that anyone can read it from anywhere.
However it seems that there is a deep need of boundaries in humans. In what forms will they exist in future?