Culture : Space

Google's Personal Maps

Evgeny Morozov wrote an interesting article, "My Map or Yours?," for Slate critiquing Google’s plan to personalize maps.  I agree with Morozo that there are social implications that need to be considered.

From the article:

 “Google's urbanism, on the other hand, is that of someone who is trying to get to a shopping mall in their self-driving car. It's profoundly utilitarian, even selfish in character, with little to no concern for how public space is experienced. In Google's world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to. Since no one formally reviews public space or mentions it in their emails, it might as well disappear from Google's highly personalized maps.”

Are American Shopping Malls Dying?

Surfing the web I found this interesting website, Dead Malls, by three historians that have documented the death of retail malls in the US for over 10 years.  They provide many links from numerous contributors featuring malls all over the US.

Also, note related article on the Atlantic Cities:  The Death of the American Shopping Mall

 

The website and article recalled two quotes:

"In consumer capitalism, the working classes abandon the union hall for the shopping mall and celebrate the system that fuels the desires that it ultimately cannot satisfy."

"To expand the domain of shopping and profit, advertisers are already creating new malls in cyberspace that will provide virtual shopping environments of the most exotic kind to parade an unbelievable surfeit of products. Indeed, corporations are currently establishing Web sites on the Internet which offer all sorts of visual spectacles in order to entice customers to buy their goods and provide consumer profile information for future advertising and commercial ventures."

In "Debord and the Postmodern Turn: New Stages of the Spectacle" by Steven Best and Douglas Kellner