cells and open spaces: two scenes, two glimpses

ACT 1

Babel's scene

The academic system inserts us into boxes or niches, like prison cells, where we keep occupied all the time in develloping things according to a specific code in a particular field. This code builds up the walls of the cell. Inside the cell, like astronauts inside their capsules, one feels at home; sometimes one even thinks that he or she is very important, being aplauded by the other occupants. Outside the cell is the dangerous, undefined, unlimited unknown. Some people live in a cell all their lifes, looking prudently through small holes to the dangerous outside just in order to confirm the well-being of the cell. Cells of the same group communicate and exchange information, to reinforce the identity of the codified field, of the shared horizon.

The under-humanity thus confined has rituals and entertainments, of course. One is the entrance ritual; another is the issue one, when a member is too old or dyes. Then the cell opens an excremental way to get rid of it, leaving it to the silence and solitude of the outer space where it disappears.

The same sometimes occurs with those who disobey the rules beyond a certain limit. The are automatically expelled.

ACT 2

Centuries later

Boxes, cells, compartments, are curiosities of the past. Each one contains the memories of those who lived and died there. They are museums.

Life, research, innovation is outside, in the fluid outer space organized according to an universal management system. Everybody is free and each one makes its own path in the empty, ethereal space. People navigates constantly and make and unmake relationships and plans. They are programmers, and each one is provided with a translation system in order to transplant ideas from mind to mind, and to reconvert endlessly these ideas into new ideas or prospects. Time and space are abstract and particular to each project; they normally evolve at a enormous speed. People may migrate from one project to another. Everything is smooth and clean. Those who live in this motion picture flow.