deliberately slow bradford watson We find ourselves in the epoch of the Anthropocene, marked by our impact on the global ecology. The most discussed aspect of this is climate change. However, there are many other unnoticed aspects of the Anthropocene that are so common that they have become the given context. This is seen in a prosaic way through the massive road cuts that allow interstates and rail lines to travel through otherwise difficult or impossible mountain terrain. It can also be seen in our global connectivity via high speed travel or through technology that allows us to be anywhere and in multiple places simultaneously. When this epoch began is debated, with some arguing for the Trinity Test in 1945, while others argue that it began 12,000 years ago with the Agricultural Revolution — the Holocene. Clearly the creation of Trinitite, a new mineral created by the plutonium-based nuclear explosion, is an easy marker of our significant change to the environment. However, perhaps the anthropo-geomorphological condition we currently find ourselves in, a by-product landscape created by industrialised sorting regimes, did begin with the Agricultural Revolution, for it is from this point on that we have manipulated and dictated the environment to serve our needs. Geology or geological time, is a critical element within this context as it records and marks the transformation we have wrought in a very slow manner. While our impact on geology fluctuates in intensity, geology provides a certain resistance requiring an exponential growth and development in technology to overcome both its momentum and inertia. The inscription on the the Engineering Building at the University of Wyoming is 'Strive On - The Control of Nature is Won, Not Given', a quote that became the title for a collection of essays by John McPhee who described his book 'as not an editorial. It is a description of people defying nature. They may have no choice.' This distinction frames the condition in which we find ourselves; one that is reactionary, trying to keep up. Perhaps a consideration of geological thinking and pace, a complement rather than a counter to urgency, would allow us to reveal latent potential for change. Perhaps being deliberately slow could give a new agency to design. Perhaps slowness can reveal things that we cannot see because of our current frantic pace.
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