my vedana

In affluent and highly-digitized societies childhood is infused with technology. Digital technology has to be factored in from the prenatal stage when the first images of a baby are scans on screens, circulated by mobile phone and posted on social networking sites. And for the newborn, not only are the toys digital but the everyday practices that they participate in with adults are similarly mediated. I'm slowly building up an archive of images - here's Dylan at six months doing his first international Skype call. And that's just the beginning!

For me Clarke's shoes are forever associated with the sensible and conventional footwear of the late '50s. Now they are the shoe of choice for the discerning Yardie - at least if we believe the video. There is that strange loop in which naff things suddenly become cool and cool things become naff. The same happened to Burberry (which I believe is back where it started) and high-waist wide-leg trousers which are making a come back. Who knows, maybe Vybz Kartel have got it wrong about the shoes - maybe Yardies prefer sandals - or maybe it's subtle viral advertising. But if I'm sitting on the Tube and catch sight of some Clarkes, I think I'll play safe and avoid eye contact. You never know.

Young children lit up yesterday's dissemination conference of the 'Children's playground games and songs in the new media age' project at the British Library. The documentary film Ip-dipi-dation: My Generation was a triumph. I hope it gets a more public airing or at least gets posted somewhere where more people can get access to it and talk about it. Adult intervention has been minimised, the kids just talk and show what they do, and that's what makes it so powerful. Having said that it is, of course an adult view, with the images carefully framed, edited, and sequenced. We hardly notice the meta-text which is about adults talking to adults about children. And I was left with that overall feeling about this area which is such a tricky one to study. The project team have been meticulous in avoiding over-interpretation and unnecessary theorising, but as adults we certainly have a thirst for that. The British Library now have an impressive digitised archive which you can see here and the researchers have plenty to write and talk about. Part of that, I suspect, will be about the methodological problem of making sense of children's worlds in the first place. I was struck by how much we want to make some of this ephemeral stuff meaningful. For the children themselves, particularly the younger ones, I suspect that meaning is always in process. They do it because they do it, without being clear about why, and so the meanings are both opaque and fluid, and always multiple.

The way in which colour associates with ideas and rituals is certainly a cultural construction. Note the way in which people in different societies use different colours at weddings and funerals. The same goes for an idea like the future. For a long time I was so impressed by the advertising campaign that I thought that the future was Orange. But recently I've succumbed to the idea that the future is in fact blue. Cars are employing blue technology (which is apparently green) and all sorts of new gadgets are blue-chipped or have bluetooth fitted, and videos, of course now have blu-ray equivalents. But the future is a moving target and my future colour scheme underwent yet another change on Friday. I was, in fact, reminded of Proust and I quote from the last book of his monumental work: 'As in a snowy landscape,the degree of whiteness attained by a person's hair seemed in general to be an indication of the depth of time through which he or she had lived, just as in a range of mountains the higher peaks, even though they appear to the eye to be on the same level as the rest, nevertheless reveal their great altitude by the intensity of their snowy whiteness.' I was at yet another retirement do; and that's where I formed the distinct impression that the future is now white. In fact, at least for me, white is the new black.