A Superficial Evocation of Our Times

Historians often forget about the extent to which their craft requires evoking the past—or in the words of the American Heritage Dictionary, "creating it anew through the power of memory or imagination." Historians have different ways of awakening the past. Some excite curiosity, others arouse empathy, while yet others pose perplexing inquiries, tell fascinating stories, point out awesome convergences and astounding coincidences, or call for moral and self-examination. The stature and popularity of historians turn not just on good arguments, solid narratives, and thorough explanations, but also on a capacity to bring forth an intriguing subject, a problematic situation, or an abiding puzzle. Evoking rather than explaining the past can revivify the relationship between the past and the present and invite curious themes and fresh speculation.

As dust and walking were subjects of recent works,¹ my current means of evoking the past—and showing how markedly different it was from the present—is to concentrate on surfaces. I suggest that proof of the dynamic change that increasingly characterizes contemporary times is to be seen, like agates in a wash, right on the ground before us. This proof comes in the form of every surface we make, touch, imagine, and invent. Our revolutionary control of surfaces defines our environments, shapes our lives, and forms our minds.

Unlike his predecessor of a century ago, the contemporary inhabitant of a Western city lives among macro- and micro-surfaces systematically shaped, scientifically designed, and industrially manufactured. These surfaces have multiple and interlocking attributes. They are variously and in combination strong, flexible, safe, sanitary, smooth, bright, colorful, and diaphanous, and can be both resistant and conductive to water and electricity. They are friendly to eye, ear, and nose, fit skin, hand, and foot, and comfort our bodies.

An advertisement for a book by Julian Ralph, 1896. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-DIGppmsca 05950].

The rough and broken roadways of king and aristocracy have become the paved highways, streets, and sidewalks of modern nations. The cultivated gardens of the elite few have become the lawns and parks of the many. Our common building materials include not just brick, stone, wood, and masonry supplies, but glass blocks, ornaments of all types, landscape fabrics, concrete pavers, coatings, paints, sealants, and caulking. Tools, machines, and materials of all kinds organize, contour, and plant surfaces to mitigate dust, retain silts, and control water. Indoors, walls and surface tops are well-lit and smooth, serving quick eye and hand motion. Edges are rounded off. Materials don't snap, shatter, or splinter, are easily cleanable, and do not gather or hold moisture. As I point out in my book On Foot: A History of Walking, interior and exterior surfaces have been made smooth, wide, and straight for easy and fast travel on foot and wheels.

Nowadays we paint nearly all surfaces; allow visitors to sit on chairs and sofas rather than lean against walls or rest on their haunches; provide for sleep on comfortable beds and mattresses; and decorate these inner worlds with familiar objects, paintings, and photographs. In the kitchen, a mix of light, bright, and efficient surfaces and machines abound. Plastic and metal pots, pans, bowls, and dishes join bright containers, boxes, and wrappers. Because of this very recent and ongoing taming of domestic surfaces, one's home is more than the master's castle; it has become a veritable internal kingdom designed for the expression and expansion of our individual and intimate selves.

As we shape the world around us to fit our needs and pleasures, so we accommodate our bodies to the surrounding world of surfaces. We care for and modify our skin and faces. We wear an outer skin of clothes, often composed of synthetic materials that are appropriately warm, waterproof, and cleanable, as well as pleasurably colorful, designed and styled for expression. For her feet, the contemporary citizen, who does not know what it means to live day in and day out in bare feet, selects from a variety of slippers, boots, and shoes (all of them serving specialized...