About Broken Postcard

I’m a User Experience Architect by profession. I’ve worked across several platforms and industries; you can check out my work website at Human Interaction Design.

From a young age I had an interest in philosophy, art, culture and ideas. At university I studied psychology, cognitive science, consciousness studies and philosophy. That became a platform for thinking about philosophy which, for a while I accepted without question.

Today I work with metaphors that people interact with. But, for me metaphors, artifacts of society are pieces of a whole; a system of moments; moments of recognition, subjectivity and inter-subjectivity that we move through as people.

I started writing Broken Postcard several years ago. Since then I’ve taken the blog down twice. At first the blog contained a mixture of essays, thoughts and many of the ideas that now appear in its pages. The problem was I didn’t understand it; I didn’t know what it was for.

Broken Postcard is simple. The blog is a place to think about experience. It is a a single piece that explores consciousness, history, society, culture and the self.Mostly however, it is a platform. As I write, read, learn and develop so does the blog. As that happens ideas grow and as they do thoughts come together. In that respect it’s a living breathing piece of writing.

When I started the blog I was inspired by trips I used to take to London’s South Bank. There I would visit the Tate Modern, buy postcards and read between watching people walk by. As I read I would take notes on the back of those postcards. They would become bookmarks, first in the books I was reading and then notebooks I collected and filled up; I never threw them away but, they did become worn. In a very clear sense they were both forgotten and remembered at the same time. I knew they were there but, I neglected them to get on with the task of living.

In this way the blog’s name became homage to the ideas on those postcards. They came to represent the thesis in the pages here; they are the unifying concept. That synthesis is centered in our experience and maybe in some respect a moment of humanity.

This blog therefore is a representation of all of those postcards and it is a pause for thought. Thought present, remembered and forgotten. The blog is not designed to be popular. The posts are longer than many blogs and the ideas are not always intuitive. However, as I write I do my best to make them accessible if not for you, someone reading, then at least for me; as a litmus test of the clarity with which I am thinking.

However, if you do find yourself reading, interested and you want to comment and communicate then, as the writer of the blog and the keeper of the postcards I can assure that your contact, comments and thoughts will be appreciated. The human in me likes the idea that someone is reading and maybe has an interest in the same ideas that have inspired me since I was a student.

With Kind Regards,
Alex Crockett