Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Possessing - Space in Time

I remember the time when I was about to leave my College - IIT Roorkee (where I did my graduation). I had cleared my ‘no dues’ and handed my ID card in the administrative office of my college. I came out and was passing from the library when suddenly realized that this place no longer belongs to me. I’ve no right to go to the library I had used for the last 5 years. I can still recall in detail how upset I was and how dejected I felt. This memory was fresh when I left my postgraduate institute (NID); so I prepared myself to accept this emotion.

I recently visited NID and I saw one of my juniors sitting quietly on the bench. The new batch has joined in and they were roaming all over the campus. I went and asked her why she was so quite. She told me a strange thing – She said that she was not able to adjust and accept that now she has to share her institute with strangers - her juniors. She was not able to accept that her institute belongs to her juniors as much as it belongs to her.

After that I came back to my home where my father had just retired after about 45 years of service – he was a Professor. I saw him sitting quietly and trying to adjust to the terms that he doesn’t have much right left in his University.

Then I sat quietly wondering how we humans start to feel emotionally attached with a SPACE. We want possess it for our lives; but we most often forget that the possession is there for a moment in TIME. That space is ours for a moment then it starts to belong to others. This relationship of time and space is quite intriguing; people return back to their old institutes/homes to re-live their gone-by era. But we forget that thought the SPACE is there but the TIME has changed. Now it’s someone else who own and possess it. That’s why when we come back to live our older moments we feel disappointed. It’s a normal human emotion and we as designer need to know it. We (designers) need to know others and ourselves a little better to make our and their life a little more pleasant. I was wondering - ‘can’ or ‘how can’ this emotions be generated for the web?

So when ever you want to re-live your moment in a ‘space’ think about the it and enjoy it in its ‘present form’…

I don’t know, but I feel that a dying man might also feel the same emotions on losing the possession of Space in Time…

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