The digital divide as it exists today plays very much into our experiences with the online market. Assuming for a moment that everyone did have access to ambient broadband, those of lower socio-economic means would still find it necessary to shop in physical markets for several reasons. Living dollar to dollar doesn’t always allow for purchases that are not needed for that day - i.e., to buy items for tonight’s dinner, one needs to go to a physical market.. not everyone has the luxury or means to purchase goods in advance of when they are necessary. (For this reason we have the single ride metrocards - even though one ends up paying more for travel, sometimes that’s the only way to go). Perhaps once delivery is instantaneous from the online marketplace, this will even out a little bit (we see this a little bit with Craigslist). Commerce online mandates that one has a fairly structured financial existence, with either a credit card or a checking account - this is also a dividing factor.
The niche propositions that the urban environment affords are wonderful, and for many of us part of the reason that we are here..but they are perhaps not relevant to those for whom such spending would be out of the question. It seems that at this moment in time online commerce is much more accessible and realistic for some of us, while those who don’t have access to credit cards, or even shipping addresses, are left out. It should be the other way, no? Perhaps once these basic issues are ironed out - everyone has a device with broadband, everyone has a method of payment, everyone has a way to receive goods - then e-commerce will really dominate in a way that affects the physical market. At that point in time, I would imagine that e-commerce would be the ideal way to engage in comparison shopping and to shop in an economically efficient manner. I would predict that the physical market will continue to flourish for certain niche goods, and perhaps food and other sustenance items.
posted by Amanda @ 7:40 PM,
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Street
Original reading can be found here.
The street does, indeed, provide a richness that is unrivaled by any other geographic circulatory system. By street, of course, I mean sidewalk. I can’t help but quote Jane Jacobs’ famed Sidewalk Ballet writing from The Death and Life of Great American Cities:
—
Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with improvisations.
—
It seems that though there was a great deal of attention paid to interaction on city streets at one point in time, the focus has largely shifted to analyzing the streets in an effort towards crime prevention. It’s a shame really. I guess one could point toward the 1950s - the automotive boom and the move toward urban renewal and new forms of public housing - as the time when shifts were really taking place in the ways in which streets were treated at least in New York. Now, it seems, one is much more contained and restrained by the needs of vehicles. Projects like the construction of the BQE all but obliterated some of the neighborhoods in which one could see the most dynamic street ballet. (In New York, whole streets have disappeared as part of construction projects - take a look at the Greenwich Village Street Necrology page over at Forgotten New York if you’re interested).
Alex mentions the big boys above.. his reference both to retail monotony and the steaminess of the streets makes me think of the summer and being beckoned into those big box stores by the frigid air conditioning … pulling us from the streets (and the opportunities for serendipitous encounters) and into something entirely predictable.. or at least designed for predictability.
Of course in New York the activity of the streets is matched by what is always happening under the streets. The subways are a whole other ecosystem under our feet.. carrying 4 million people and their stories a day. And every day, whether we are aware of it or not, New York’s third water tunnel is being dug underneath us (at points, an astonishing 800 feet below us). At 60 miles long, it’s to be the longest tunnel in the country. The project that was started in 1970, and still has 12 years to go, has not only it’s whole own environment, but its own citizenry down below.
On a side note - I loved looking at the Urban Markup Language Flickr pool. It reminds me of the scrawl of hobo language (later revived and referenced as part of the foundation of warchalking). Both the hobo/tramp signs and warchalking used the streets as tablet .. tracking access and experience and communicating to others walking the same way.
posted by Amanda @ 9:21 PM,
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Listen, Talk
Project number one.
posted by Amanda @ 5:38 PM,
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Door
Original reading here.
In reading on the apertures of door and window these last few weeks, I am reminded of a documentary that I saw recently about the advent of ice machines and, in turn, air conditioning. The birth of air conditioning in homes had a tremendous impact on American culture. One of the most significant changes was the frequency with which people left their doors and windows open at home. With air conditioning in homes, people closed their doors to keep the cold air in and, of course, because there was no longer a need for outside air. In the suburbs and rural areas this meant that people stopped talking to each other through windows and neighbors largely stopped sitting outside on each other’s porches. I would imagine that in cities, it led to people spending less time with one another on their stoops - perhaps it even led to fewer eyes on the street since windows had started to close.
This led me to think about permissioning, in general, in New York City. I remember when I was growing up, being perplexed by what I saw in movies - where someone would just stop by someone else’s house and ring the doorbell, or just walk in. For most people in New York there is this additional layer of security that we have - either with intercom systems or doormen, or sometimes both. Perhaps an early sign of the deferential permissioning of which Adam speaks (though highly visible and perceptible).
Today I sent in a passport renewal form to the Department of State.. I was informed on the application that my passport will contain an electronic chip that will be sensed at certain countries’ points of entry, and that my data will be collected and stored. I, as an American in this case, tend to be the authorized person and can pass through these doors - we are literally given the key to the countries.
posted by Amanda @ 5:25 PM,
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Window
Original reading here
Last week in class we talked a lot about the penetrability (or impenetrability) of digital walls. In thinking about the affordances of windows, this brings up some interesting thoughts. Physically instantiated windows, generally, are two-way viewing devices. Though the reciprocity of viewing is often mediated by heights and angles that make it uneven (someone viewing a street from above is able to see much more of a scene than someone on the street below looking up and into a window). When one is looking out, one is aware that someone can look in at the same time. Using the screen-as-window metaphor, this shifts the paradigm.. The internet is a window into so many things, but I am not being viewed while I am gazing through it. I think this indicates a crucial difference between the physical window and all later iterations of such. Though yes, as mentioned above, when one is in a darkly lit room, it is possible to look out the window at someone without them noticing, there is still the knowledge of the possibility that one may be being observed - this knowledge, on some level, has an effect our behaviors while viewing.
It’s interesting to take a look at the ways in which environmental circumstances mediate the reciprocity of viewing. I am reminded of taking the train from New York to California - on long haul Amtrak rides from Chicago on, there is a viewing car that is almost all windows, from floor to ceiling. The seats swivel 360degrees and one is able to gaze out on the landscape and towns that you go hurtling through. The residents of these towns, however, have no ability to look into the train’s windows, because of the speed at which it travels. The Savannah preference in motion I suppose.
posted by Amanda @ 5:23 PM,
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Wall
Original reading here.
In considering walls this week, I was struck by the seemingly banal notion of walls being eye-level. One often hears of the oppressiveness of the glass ceiling, but rarely hears of the ways in which walls serve to circumscribe lives and maintain the sense of societal control. I am reminded of Mike Davis’ City of Quartz, in which the author describes a post-modern Los Angeles only accessible to the chosen few - those with upward mobility and automobiles.. the rich and the powerful. Similar to the ‘unsleepable’ bench that was saw an image of in class last week, Davis describes shopping centers in L.A. that are accessible solely via car. Walls, serve in this case as a horses blinders would.. preventing the individual from having a full awareness of what is happening just beyond. In the same way, during the 50 year reign of Robert Moses in New York City, many highways were built with bridges so low that public buses could not share the roads for lack of available clearance. In these cases the walls are intentionally constructed to divide, separate, and oppress. Clearly the three most obvious examples would by the Great Wall of China, the Israeli wall and the new wall along the U.S. - Mexican border. Banksy’s Israeli Wall paintings bring to the forefront many of the ways in which walls can be considered as part of our day to day lives. Painting placid, inviting scenes - a la trompe l’oeil - serves to bring our attention to the ways in which a wall is a barrier, but also makes note of the availability of a peace and comfort just out of reach.
I am wondering, though, how walls have been changing as technology and industry is changing. Clearly physical walls can be conquered, but, as things change, will more subtle divisions remain? Isn’t there increased accessibility in our world of pervasive and democratized technology — doesn’t everyone have access? Indeed no. Last week I was at a party at the Rose Center at the Museum of Natural History on a Friday night. It was necessary to purchase my tickets online. This is accepted commonly and is generally the only way, in Manhattan, to get movie tickets as well (lest they be sold out at showtime). To my dismay, however, it was necessary for me to use my credit card at a kiosk inside to purchase drink tickets before went to the bar. These seemingly invisible and virtual walls separate us just as much.. in fact more than a physical wall ever could. Virtual walls, indeed, seem to remove agency from the individual.. one cannot scale a wall that one cannot see through sheer strength and force - virtual walls seem to have increased the subjectivity behind these divisions. When walls are virtual, they are updatable and customizable - they can be tweaked to sift out different undesirables at every stage.
posted by Amanda @ 5:21 PM,
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testing
posted by Amanda @ 8:25 AM,
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