Week 8 Entry

Borgmann makes an interesting distinction between buildin and reading a text or playing music. He talks about reading and playing in terms of realizing information. The idae is that a text or a musical score contains information that can be "realized" by people who have been trained to read the inforaion, whether it be the words in a book or the musical notes on a page of sheet music. The information is always there, but it must be realized to be realized or accessed. As Borgmann points out, it is easy to think of building in the same way. The information is contained on blueprints or architect's drawings, and the information is realized when the building is built. But Borgmann also points out that there is a difference between the process of building and that of reading a book or playing music. The difference is contingency. While a book or a piece of music may be interpreted differently or recieved differently each time they are read or heard, the information is the same every time. The words of a book don't change, and the musical notes making up the piece are always the same. The same cannot be said about building. The example Borgmann uses is the Freiburg Minster which took over 300 years to be constructed, meaning that multiple people were heading the construction during different time periods with different styles. While the example certainly proves the point Borgmann was trying to make, it is unnecessarily extreme. My father is a super intendent for a construction company, and one thing I've learned from him is that construction rarely goes as originally planned. Bad weather, or unexpected problems with designs are only a few areas where contingency can enter into the construction of a building. When Borgmann first made this distinction, I didn't really understand it, but the more I thought about it, I realized that it makes a lot of sense.