Going Beyond What We Have Accomplished

Class is over. The dorm is full of the sounds of packing and cleaning. The group is a bit sullen that our great adventure is over. Some more than a bit.

We are going back to our normal lives, but Dundee will still be in Dundee when we have left. These past six weeks have given us new insights and understandings about what makes a place, how a place can create itself, how we can create and represent places, and what a postindustrial movement might look like. So where does that leave us and Dundee? Are we parting as 'just friends,' or are we taking a larger feeling home? Each of us will have to answer that for ourselves, and each of us will have different views of what we have done here. But one thing is clear: We now have a vision of what might be, how we can encourage the changes needed to bring out the potential of a location like Dundee, and we can see that slightly out-of-focus bit around the edges of what might be coming.

In short, Dundee has not just been a place. It has permeated our minds and ideas. From here, we can see what Dundee could be and how we would want to be part of that growth, invention, evolution. Selling underwater wave generation in the Tay to the people of Dundee. Encouraging Dundee to become a test bed for wind and sea power generation. Building a stronger, more faceted cultural experience. Taking what Dundee has hidden away and bringing it out for folks to enjoy, appreciate, and be proud of.

So the postindustrial might be a difficult concept to manage, and our direct affects may be limited. That just means we need to keep looking and searching and taking chances to better envision the postindustrial and find the critical points within the potential that would benefit from--if not require--professional writers. One aspect of the postindustrial is seeing how a system really works and questioning the methods used to accomplish a task. Asking questions, finding answers, presenting results, building recommendations. We are in a good spot to make a difference.