Track 17

Track 17

Alison: So, Greg, Kirsty, have you done much research for our project yet?

Greg: I haven’t done as much reading as I’d planned to but I’ve got quite a lot of books and journal articles that might be relevant.

Kirsty: Good work Greg! I think I might have worked out how we can approach the project and give it a more specific focus than the title that Dr Jones suggested, which is too vague.

Greg: Oh really - how’s that?

Kirsty: Well, we know that the New Seven Wonders of the World were chosen a few years ago but I think that how they were chosen and what this says about people’s relationships to their architectural and natural national heritage is far more interesting than just doing a project that describes what they are and why they were chosen. What do you think Alison?

Alison: You know I think you could be right there. Didn’t Dr Jones mention something in our last lecture about how many more people voted for some of the wonders than the total number of people in the country?

Greg: Mmm, that did happen. In a sense it wasn’t really a voting system at all - more like a TV talent show. It wasn’t nearly as scientific as political voting systems because people could vote as many times as they wanted and it was all done via the Internet so it only applied to people with access to a computer. And most of the votes for the wonders came from the country’s own citizens.

Kirsty: Mmm, that’s interesting. I think therefore that we can show how the modern choices were different from the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World because the original wonders were chosen by travellers while the latest list was chosen by people from the same country as the wonder itself. From this we can analyse the choices and how having a building or site on this list could be more advantageous to some countries than others. For example, countries which rely less heavily than others on tourism may not have been nearly as interested in the whole competition as those who wanted to boost visitor numbers. Then we could compare this with how travellers chose the previous wonders.

Alison: Okay, now I understand and yes I think it’s a great idea. Let’s do it!

Greg: Yes, I think th a t’ll really give us an edge compared to the other students. It’ll make the final project considerably more original. Remember, Dr Jones isn’t expecting much from us given the result for our last project! But I’m just slightly worried that we might not have as much time as we’d like to do the reading.

Alison: Mmm…. I see what you mean. Well, why don’t we do as much reading of these books and journals as we can and then meet again on Friday to make a final decision on content?

Kirsty: That’s a good idea Alison.

Greg: Absolutely, then we can make sure we won’t read too much and w ill s till have enough time for the actual project writing.