Globalization, The Process of Identity and Social Hope

Richard Rorty calls for the return of philosophy to the cause of social change and support of a global utopia. He addresses his concern that current philosophy has lost sight of this aim which, until recently, has dominated the thought of past philosophers such as Marx, Dewey and Hobbes. These philosophers hinged their dialectics on historical narratives constructing "taxonomies of social phenomena" that dared to criticize current dominant social institutions. Today however, Rorty criticizes current philosophy as being submissive to the dominant social agenda, that it is now being used to create 'redescriptions of social phenomena' to reiterate and reinforce it, rather than to reveal its blind spots. This turn away from constructing narratives on social progress reveals a sense of despair to Rorty who believes that philosophy has become politically sterile.

However, Rorty highlights ways in which current philosphy can regain momentum on this subject, suggesting that the philosophies behind Derrida, Habermas and Lacan are supplementary to previous descriptions of Utopia such that they have revealed blindspots within the previous structures of thought and threfore have laid further tracks to the continuation of this aim.

What is intersting is that Rorty seems to negate the discourse surrounding the concepts of 'subject' and 'difference', common to current philosophy that is hinged upon the structure of language, saying that it holds no relevence to the aim of social change and political liberation. instead he maintains that a return to the old pragmatic notions of 'truth' and rationality will better serve political change in the long run; these notions that have been lost in the wave of postmodernism. So within this dialogue Rorty seems very apt to call for a paradigm shift out of the constructs of postmodernist thought into the return of a more universal ideal that trancends difference and pluralism, embraces the notion of the 'death of the subject' and that places identity of self back within the overriding construct of democracy. Within our dominant global construct that embraces difference and pluralism, Rorty calls for the ressurection of the United Nations, the democratic watchdog that has been all but abandonned as the unwavering stoic in the fight against the evils of a renegade society that no longer answers to the state.

Review--In the Place of the Public

Airport is a unique place which is isolated from the world we live in everyday. Once you enter an airport, you may begin to feel helpless because your activities are more or less under the control of others. Terminal and airplane is much like a prison in which the travellers lose the right of doing some activities.
Some terminals and airlines are trying to reduce the stress of travel and create a better experience for passengers. In the air, as on the ground, airlines are taking steps to reduce the stress of travel. Some airlines begin to provide previously unheard of services such as in-flight massages, beauty treatments and stand-up bar onboard. These are all successful attempts to create a unique experience.
Vancouver terminal is one of the successful-designed airports in the world. Travellers' experience is designed to allow views of the local mountains while walking through various indigenous art installations. Upon arriving in Vancouver, Air Canada's 'Elite' and 'Super Elite class of travellers can take a shower, have their suit steamed, shirt ironed and shoes shone in preparation for the working day ahead.
The airport design is undergoing a significant change of focus. Architects and designers are looking for new ways to enhance the experience of air travel. Greater emphasis is being placed on quality of furnishing, interesting spaces, natural lighting and all-important retailing. The old-style airports which were airline-centred are being replaced by something more resembling a shopping mall. Many airports now look to parking, retail, commercial, hotels, meeting facilities and food and beverage uses for a large percent of their revenues. It suggests that travellers have altered their expectations of airports considerably.
Koolhaas considered the idea of airports replacing the city and becoming both hyper-global and hyper-local. They are global in the sense that they are increasingly filled with the same multi-national retailers and brands which are available everywhere, but also hyper-local in that they frequently display museum-like representations of local culture. Koolhaas described the contemporary airport as "like a drastic perfume demonstration, photomurals, vegetation, local costumes give a first concentrated blast of the local identity (sometimes it is also the last)".

The Overexposed City; The Ghostly Landscape

Barriers and boundaries within cities now define them. Screen interfacing is now 'visibility without confrontation', a depth of field now exists erasing the face to face city scape, mutes the conversation within the city and takes it further from reality.
Cities run into cities and nothing is far away anymore, everything becomes overexposed. We no longer enter a city through a 'ceremonial gate' or 'triumphal arch' but through 'technological space- time' where all time is warped; day is night and nigh is when there is no longer communication, so does it ever come?
So how do we organize our cities? Where is the place of urban architecture? What becomes the function of it, can we still design for cities while we are absorbed within this sub- reality, this technological space- time? Does architecture still have a place in our society or is it fizzling out? Will it still contain a purity of line, the complexity of being made with two hands and the authenticity of being created with pencil and ink? Have we abandon our cities and left only a 'ghostly landscape'? The 'fossil of past societies'? Or better yet, have we abandoned our architecture, have we sold it for flashy 3D models and computer graphics? Can we fix this or are we destined to destroy our cities for the existence of this sub- reality?

In the Place of the Public...

Airports are set apart from every other form of mass transport terminals in that it severs the actual experience of its space while providing another form of experience altogether. In the airport and the aircraft an individual is emotionally detached from his or her environment. The experience of air travel, much like being within a virtual reality chamber, is completely devoid of any active engagement with the space. Here, the analogy of the flight simulator programs used by pilots becomes relevent. It is because the implications and the reality behind air travel is extremely complicated and involves such great risk that it is necessary to mask this through the simplification of environmental cues and diversions from the actual event, hence, a simulated experience for pilots and for the passengers.
On the pilots’ end, the usefulness of flight simulator programs (veritable video games) becomes relevant when you think of just how much responsibility is in hands of the pilot. So in order to eliminate the possibility of human error through emotional anxiety, pilots are desensitized from the actual event of flying. They are placed in a simulated environment, a tiny pod completely shielded from the rest of the plane (just the pilot, an array of controls and the sky), much like the environment they experienced while using the flight simulator.

On the passenger’s end, people are strapped into a confined space, like canned sardines, supplied with diversions simulating the habitual comforts of being at home (constant catering from attendants, in-flight movies), one quickly forgets that they are leaving their lives in the hands of strangers and impersonal machinery (that is subject to human and mechanical error).

Privatization of public terminals:

The experience of the airport terminal provides a different kind of experience, one that arises out of purely operational intentions.

The airport is a multi-functional, multi-dimensional system whose overriding concern is operational. Everything about the airport seems to connote a completely stripped down, separation from the actual experience of ‘flying’. Unlike other modes of mass transport (i.e train and ship travel) airplanes are kept hidden from public view, the traditional grandiose entrance of entering onto a great vessel is withheld from the passenger as they are fed through impersonal, sensory deprivation hallways that seem to deny the entrance onto a different plane of existence (did we even leave the ground? The airport terminal?). From the point of entry into the terminal to the time of landing, the passenger is shielded from the reality of this form of travel, led to believe that they are not actually in the air flying. Like watching a program on T.V. that experience is always kept as a secondary experience to the constructed diversions put in place.

The Ecstasy of Communication

Baudrillard comments on the increasing personification of objects within our daily lives. An object is no longer just an object but a 'partner'. This changes our relationship with our environment and how we connect to it, how we live through it. Object mutations come from three things, Baudrillard says; functionalization, controlling your surroundings not with your body but by electronic commands and minimization of processes. We no longer are active in our surroundings, we control by communicating through inanimate objects. They become a vital part of our environments and therefore we personify them. We are addicted to instantaneous action and the speed of communication through electronic means. These instants of communication have miniaturized all exchanges into a succession of instants, instant messaging, instant email, we control our surroundings and all exchanges from our computer. These messages lack thought, authenticity and a sense of importance. So we clutch to these electronic devises that make our lives easier for fear we won't remember how to communicate without them. Should we try to change this path we are heading down or is it inevitable to allow our bodies to disintegrate along with our method of communication?

Organs without Bodies

I seems to me that, yes, you have to abandon the coded language to achieve truth, but is it possible to do that. He seems to make parallels to bodies, you can have an organ without a body but you cannot have a body without organs, does this work the same way for the spirit and the letter? I'm finding the beginnings of the work vague, but as I get further into it I'm starting to figure out some of the earlier stuff, I'll get back to you guys about more this evening.

Organs Without Bodies: Let's start a working dialog

Hey guys: this is a call out to all of you to try as much as possible to voice your struggles with the text so that we can help eachother come to a better understanding of the framework of the text. If something in the text stands out to you or you can't figure out what tmessage the author is trying to convey, someone else might.

So here's what I don't get so far: In the last passage on page 12, the discussion has moved past the subject of being and becoming (the pure event) into the discussion of 'spirit and letter'. This is where I get lost.

The passage reads "the key to this paradox (that the new can only emerge out of repetition) is what Deleuze designates as the difference between the REAL and the ACTUAL (and which one can also determine as the difference between Spirit and the Letter)....later it is revealed that "one has to betray the letter to remain faithful to the spirit" (of thought)...

Does this mean that spirit is the virtual and the letter the actual?? that in order to gain access to the 'truth' one must betray the coded language that defines it?

I dunno....could use another point of view here...Thanks!

Crystal

Review----Encoding and Decoding

Hall suggests a four-stage theory of communication: production, circulation, use (which here he calls distribution or consumption) and reproduction.
There is no necessary correspondence between encoding and decoding, the former can attempt to ‘pre-fer’ but cannot prescribe or guarantee the latter, which has its own conditions of existence.
Denotation --- natural sign, produced without the intervention of a code.
Connotation---associative meaning, depend on the intervention of codes. In actual discourse most signs will combine both the denotative and the connotative aspects. ---sign is open to new accentuations and enters fully into the struggle over meanings. The connotative levels of signifiers have a close communication with culture, knowledge, history, and it is through them, so to speak, that the environmental world invades the linguistic and semantic system.
Three hypothetical positions of decoding:
1. Dominant-hegemonic position: everything is understood
Dominant definitions connect events, implicitly or explicitly, to grand totalisations, to the great syntagmatic views of the world—large view of issues.

2. Negotiated code: Global is understood
Smaller (local) codes are not
It accords the privileged position to the dominant definitions of events while reserving the right to make a more negotiated application to ‘local conditions’, to its own more corporate positions. Decoding within the negotiated version contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules.

3. Oppositional code: Local (smaller) codes are understood
Global is not understood

Architecture is a language which speaks to fellow architects and to the general public. An oversized door, for example, informs the public of a "main entrance to an important building'. At the same time, it can speak to fellow-architects who have moved beyond functionalism and can enjoy quotations, references, literary allusions, witticisms and arcane meanings.
Some architects use lots of architectural language in their design. Through these languages, they try to express their concept and understanding of architecture. However, the architecture he created often cannot be understood or misunderstood by the general public. How should the architect design a building? Should he/she make the design as an representation of his/her own understanding of architecture without thinking about the general publics’ appreciation, or totally according with the publics’ appreciation, or find a balance between?

Encoding and Decoding-Article Review

Hall defines the process of communication as a ‘complex structure of dominance’ involving power struggles at the production and consumption ends of the communication circuit. The production side entails encoded messages that are produced within the dominant social structure. These messages are framed by the universal structures of understanding, by social and economic relations that permit them to be disseminated into the public consciousness. Hall is careful to discern that these hegemonical ‘codes’ within discourse, while they ‘prefer’ certain modes of decoding, do not pre-determine how they are decoded on the consumption end. The processes of encoding and decoding operate autonomously from one another which often can result in misunderstandings or miscommunications. Just like the word ‘cow’ is an abstract reference to the actual cow, there is no such thing as ‘pure language’ or ‘transparent communication’. Coded messages are polysemic, such that their decoding is dependent on the cultural sub-group on the receiving end. Often there exists a disjuncture between the intended message and received message which is a result of ‘class struggles within language’, where the already coded signs intersect with the culturally rooted semantic codes of the subgroup.
Hall defines three principle methods of decoding messages, with respect to televised discourse: the first, called the dominant-hegemonic position is the universally accepted code of discourse, the one that assumes the responsibility of carefully constructing ‘perfectly transparent communication’ where the viewer ideally takes the encoded meaning and decodes the message using the reference code from which it was constructed. The second, called the ‘negotiated code’, while still acknowledging the dominant code, operates on its own agenda abstracting the message based on its own, more locally situated logic. The third, called the ‘oppositional position’, where the viewer takes the coded message and deliberately reads it using opposing frameworks of understanding to deconstruct the constructed meaning in order to get closer to the truth behind the message being conveyed.

Review-Is Times Square Dead or Alive?

Now, we have the new Times Square. In some ways, the Square has never looked better than today, with the diagonal sloping lines of the Reuters Building, the curving Deco zipper, even the giant mock dinosaur in the Toys R Us. Corporations have made America strong; I don't see anything wrong with corporations coming into Times Square. There are, of course, people who miss the old Times Square, its picturesque squalor and violence and misery and exploitation. Those who pointed at the old Times Square as an instance of everything that capitalism can do wrong now point to the new Times Square as an instance of everything that capitalism can do worse. Where once Times Square was hot, it is now cold, where once varied, now uniform, where once alive, now dead.

This is an ever-changing world. Nothing should stop progressing at any certain time. The old Times Square and the current one are both only a point of its progressing. Our dressing style is always changing; our lifestyle is quite different from the past; we are using emails instead of traditional letters, then, why the Times Square should stop changing? The Times Square also has the right to change his “clothes” and “lifestyle” to adapt to the new world. The contemporary Times Square will also be gone one day and become part of its history. The current generation like us may miss our Times Square one day as well, but we should always look forward to a new Times Square rather than cry for the old one. It is not sensible respect the past in sacrificing the future. Times Square has changed much. However, it's always been bright and exciting, and it still packs the same energy.

Hey Guys

What did everyone think of the lecture on Wednesday? These are some of the things I got from it:
If we start talking about real / fake and authentic and inauthentic I think we need to define these terms or else we will be running around in circles, also having definitions stops the excuse of subjectivity becoming an answer or the reason for a lack of an answer.

If authenticity has been set up culturally as being good, then we have to be able to define it because we created its parameters. This then creates a point of reference that we are speaking from.

Authentic is not inherently good, so why do we prefer authentic over inauthentic?

Do we look to history to create identity or do we look to what is going on right now. Exterior and interior influences/ conditions all act on identity and how we form identity.

What do you guys think about identity? Can identity change? or is it something that continues the same through life?

Temporary Contracts- article review

The Post-industrial landscape has been shaped by the effects of temporary contracts. Our flexible capitol-based economic arena characterized buy the ease of mobility of investments flowing from one company to the next has driven the value of location down in the aim to accumulate short-term capitol. Bigtime businesses are no longer controlled by a single owner who has a vested interest in the long term growth of a company, but many individual investors who's sole interest in the company is if it is profitable right now. This low-commitment attitude is described in the article as having a direct impact on the life-span of commercial buildings which are now becoming too old at 'thirty years'. Big box discount businesses like Wal-Mart operate on a 'flexible accumulation' strategy that allow them to pick up and leave a location at the drop of a dime undermine the economies of their host communities. Companies such as this target regional market groups, providing discount prices on goods that would otherwise be profitting the community-based businesses. This fierce competition stamps out small businesses and changes the consumption patterns of the community who becomes dependent on the WalMart for their daily items so that when the store vacates a location the community is left in an economic lurch.

The post-industrial landscape is shaped by the mobility of information which allowed businesses to move out of the premium lots of the downtown core to the edge of the city where lots are cheap. This has drastically created the shape of the urban environment and, subsequentially, social transactions. The formation of the 'edge city' is emblematic of the post-industrial landscape, the configuration of which favoring the private realm over the public realm. The result of this change in urban condition is described by Arendt when she criticized early on the encroachment of commerce into the public realm. The privatization of the public realm has turned the public arena into a place where the only social transactions occur out of necessity and consumer interest. The edge city is a prime example of this phenomenon, its social arena further compromised by it's autocentric infrastructure. This has left the edge-city completely void of any public social transactions outside of the commercial realm.

Is Times Square Dead?

The Commodification of place:
Times Square possesses historical linkages that have been cast in shadow by the influx of flashing lights and media advertisements over the past 15 odd years. The article calls into question the authenticity of experience and validity of place offered to the public by the structured imposition of a 'mediascape' within the previously historically emblematic Times' Square. The issue lies in the re-'place'ment of the gritty 'real' experience of the old Times Square (emblematic of the exchange of industrial capitol)with a pre-fabricated, plasticized model of experience (emblematic of the new age of information). Many loathe the new Times Square for its complete detachment from any historical reference it held previously, and for its apparent function as a masking mechanism serving to create the 'illusion of place' while behind the mask the 'real' Times Square is dying.

What is brought into question is the notion of what in fact is the 'authentic' Times Square? Is it the 'old version', emblematic of historical phenomena that took place within its confines? Or is the new version, emblematic of the current age of commodification and information explosion that holds more authenticity to the current value system? Is not the ephemeral, media dominated social arena of the new Times Square not the product of the dominant social arena of our time? Does this not in fact make the new Times Square more authentic than the older version that bespoke of a bygone age that no longer holds cultural currency today?

Week4-Homebodies on Vacation

Today, most people focus more on the destination of travelling and what can be seen in the destination. Flight saves lots of time that we spent on the travelling from one place to another before. But are we really happy about it? Someone said that: Life is like travelling, you don’t have to care about where is the destination, what you see and experience and the mood you get from them during the travelling are more important than the destination. I don’t like to travel by flying because it shortens the most important part of a trip.
There was a Chinese idiom which can be translated to “Read ten thousand books, travel ten thousand miles” or “reading lots of books doesn’t beat travelling to all places”. Ancient Chinese saw travelling as a way of learning or an extension of reading books. During a travel, you can not only see the beautiful landscape but also learn by meeting all kinds of people and things.
Travel can be a way of escaping from the pressure of daily life temporarily. People may get energetic again about life after travelling. It is a good way of getting relaxed. Movement is one of the most important things of travel. I agree that if video travel offers infinite destinations without the expenditure of movement-the paradox of going without leaving-then tourism reverses the logic. Video travel has many advantages such as: elastic, low cost and time-saving. However, it cannot take place of traditional travel because people always seek authentic things. Video travel may stimulate people’s desire of going to the place rather than reduce it.

Homebodies on vacation-Review

The article analyzes the characteristics of modern travel that have evolved out of the modern technological arena. The modern traveler seeks escape from the fictitious, digital environment to places that connect them to the past and the natural (the real). However, the traveler cannot fully escape the throes of technology and globalization. As the article points out, commodification of vision and experience has permeated the realm of travel. The mechanics of travel have drastically changed since the Renaissance. Where the Renaissance traveler sought out active discourse within their new environments, the modern traveler has evolved into the role of the ‘passive voyeur’, of consumer of their new environments.

Technology and the commodification of vision have permeated our existential behavior to the point where we seek out mediated environments, even when trying to escape them. Travel is in many ways ‘a construction of authenticity’ designed to meet the desires of the traveler seeking out ‘the real’ to escape their otherwise fabricated existence in western society. Within this construct the traveler follows delineated ‘scenic routes’ (those optically engineered postcard views that displace the ‘unsightly views’) seeking out photo-ops as souvenirs, proof of the accountability of their experience. These postcard views then become commodified through tourist consumption which turns the sight into a symbolic representation of its natural state while engineers struggle to maintain the view to meet its ‘expected image’.

Every ‘sight’ a tourist visits is a representation of its own original state mediated through artificial fields of vision (through the car windshield, camera lens, and corded off viewing posts) that objectify the natural world into a ‘possessable artifact’ ready for consumption. From the official sights engineered to reconstruct the historic past to the picture window views from within the ‘vacation home’, the commodification of vision through mediating frameworks has become an industry to meet the desire of a growing leisure oriented society where each person desires to possess a piece of the natural world. The tourist’s consumption of the ‘pre-packaged authentic’ is destroying the very thing they seek to possess.

Is Time Square Dead?

In the article Time Square: Dead or Alive we can see the progression of Time Square from a place that represented New York to a place that represents the large advertisement and entertainment companies of the States. Is not enough credit given to the public to be interested in a Times Square that represents a deeper history of the city. Will the public eventually get tired of superficial "razzle dazzle" and pass on Times Square for the bigger Las Vegas? Will the lack of history force Times Square to lose its sense of place? Big bill boards and flashing lights can be found around the world from Tokyo to London, what makes Times Square unique to New York? I think eventually the spark will fade and people will pass on going to see something that they could see anywhere. A sense of place is very important to tourism and without it Times Square becomes pastiche, a second rate Vegas. We can't let these large electronic imaging companies take away or erase the sense of 'original' artist or creator. If we reuse and edit images over and over we lose a sense of creator and if we lose this then we lose a sense of place, time and identity. Time Square can be brought back to life, with it's own history it will create its own identity.

I Think I'd like a home away from home!!

Isn't being at home the best feeling ever? Even a vacation can't replicate that emotion, but being at home we are reminded of all our daily responsibilities. The laundry has to be done and the kitchen has to be cleaned, the dog needs a walk and I have to remember to pay the water bill. I love to be home, but if I could get that same feeling away from home, I'm gone. I think this explains the sudden popularity of summer homes and cabins, a place to get away without really getting away, a space that will focus our sight on magnificent views and scenic drives. These vacations at home fit perfectly into our lives valuing commodity and convenience. Sightseeing can be done in our own countries with the help of a sign to tell us there is something to see. This illustrates how our society is so used to placing frames around things that should be noticed, without them we would just drive on by. We use a frame of reference constantly, from our car windshield to home windows, we consider views very important to our quality of life and society has kept up to speed with placing signs on every natural view we should want to look at. Travelling becomes more about the tourism then the adventure of finding something new on your own. Guided tours tell you exactly where to go and what to look at. It has become so commercialized that I think it has lost some of the mystery and adventure to waking up in a new place and having no idea what you will find. People now want convenience and maybe having a memory of a place is really more important then actually going there but I think we are cheating ourselves out of life if we believe that. We should not be trying to make a world where in we don't go anywhere, we work at home, we vacation at home, the same city, the same thing over and over again, sometimes you just got to get the hell out!!!

Hey Everyone

How's everybody? What did you guys think of the last articles? I agreed with the fact that we need to change or we will destroy our cities. Here are my notes, feel free to comment on any of my questions.

Temporary Contracts

Are architects the only ones worrying about this? I think this is a way larger problem that, yes, we can do something about but we cannot fix it until our whole society realizes that something is wrong with having temporary everything.
Companies no longer care about the people they impact, they only care for themselves and the quickest way to make a buck. They do not care about sustaining a well respected business attitude with repeat customers, and customers don’t seem to mind this. The facts and statistics listed in the article are repulsive and widely unknown, these are impacts we will be feeling in twenty years and then we will ask ourselves “why weren’t we told we were doing this to ourselves?” Why didn’t the government step in and predict our downfall? If consumption doesn’t change, eventually we all will know it is a problem – when everything is gone.
We can write and talk about these things but the bottom line is that if every one doesn’t start believing that how they are living is not sustainable, we don’t have a chance to change our fate. In a world where one person cannot make a difference people just plain don’t care.