This is the late Martin Kippenberger's project for a global subway system - one of his portable subway entrances, courtesy of BLDGBLOG.What if such a subway existed? Where would you go first?
I was thinking - in the bed-headed, leg-deadened, caffeine-craving delirium of an 8-hour flight yesterday - of what it would be like if Star Trek transporter systems actually existed. You could be anywhere almost any time. Lunch in Amman, an aperitif in Aix-en-Provence, dinner in Tokyo, a movie in New York, a drink and some live music in Rio, and a late-night walk in the park in Sevilla. What a date.
Without technological constraints on physical mobility, would we still have the much-vaunted "sense of place"? Would it matter if we didn't? Would everywhere be "place"?
9 comments:
The subway would be nifty, and I would welcome it.
However, I'm not sure about having strangers teleport themselves in and out of my quarters without warning or permission--though this would be balanced by the potential for remarkable practical jokes.
Teleportation would probably destroy civilization as we know it.
Breakfast in Mogadishu appeals to me to no end due to a friendly disposition of the natives, if it could be followed by a lunch at Ahamajinedad's place in Tehran. After that I am sure that the late afternoon nap would be just right in the Gaddafi's magnificent tent (not under the same covers) anywhere in his vast and beautiful desert. Also, have you ever seen those babe body guards of his? Call me crazy, but coctails with that Elvis wannabe, Kim Jong Ill, would be a blast. Dinner in Peking with the fellows of the politbyro couldn't be beaten, especially when one is addicted to shredded pork belly lining as much as I am. However, I would call it a night pretty early because I would have to go back to Pyongjang for it's rocking night life. My buddy Ill knows the town's hot spots and propably would line me up with some memorable experiences in the oriental art of male pleasing.
Lets get the damn construction started ASP!
We could easily imagine some states - the US, North Korea - and high security areas setting up transporter barrier technology. I wonder if we'd just collapse back into state divisions. Youmight have a Minuteman type organization that shoots-to-kill transporters.
Assuming that the barrier technology didn't exist (although I can't imagine the transporter tech would exist at all without some barrier tech), we'd likely become pretty paranoid or take a completely different view of the self.
Also, on the same assumption, we could imagine that states like North Korea wouldn't exist for long in their current state. The first North Koreans who showed up for a job at a Chicago Kinko's would likely be quite disoriented.
The implications for domestic economies and the global economy boggle the mind.
I think we lost our sense of space with the invention of the car, the interstate and the suburbs. At least for a lot of people. Flying isn't traveling: In one airport, long sit in noisy tube, out at another airport. Global commerce meanwhile is probably causing places to look and sound and taste every more the same than they ever did. You need a more up-to-date science-fiction fantasy, helmut, is what I think.
I'm not so sure, MT. Here's an analogy - in DC the museums are free. This means that when I'm downtown I can enter the National Museum, say, go straight to the Leonardo, look at it for ten minutes, and then leave, passing everything else along the way. The Louvre is expensive and huge - people often become exhausted because they believe they need to get their money's worth.
If transporter tech was readily available it would cut out the pain-in-the-ass aspects of air travel, but also mean that one could decide to go to Amsterdam for the afternoon when one finds some free time.
Yes, the auto changed everything in the US, and airport life is like living in a closet for several hours. But the immediacy of the transporter would cut out the process of physical trtavel and displace towards the element of travel you're talking about - the experiential part having to do with places and people.
The private jet-owning filthy rich, and the rich in general, don't perceive the same cost barriers at least (I had a friend in the Royal Canadian Air Force who could fly to France for ten dollars [Canadian]). Being able to afford the Concorde cuts the time barrier down a little less. The term "jet set" has fallen out of fashion now that even poor people can fly in principle, but I think it's useful because I think jet-setters live in a different world, irrespective of the money they have to throw around or the quality of champagne they drink, which just comes everywhere seeming close. It's an irrational sense of closeness. I guess that's why instinctively I thought "instant transport" wouldn't be a totally revolutionary advance in terms of our sense of space...or place...or both. Civilization is making all kinds of senses unnecessary. Where does our food come from? How was our instant meal made? Our shelter? Our roads? What do space and time matter if I can always reach my friend on her cell phone, and she can leave me a voicemail I can hear later? Maybe the most revolutionary invention was money.
Not to say a transporter system wouldn't be supercool or that I wouldn't all over it or that it wouldn't radically our lifestyle.
You might like Albert Borgmann, MT. Check out his stuff on the "device paradigm."
We live in a mcbucwfz world.
Thanks for the recommendation, helmut. I skimmed a little that's available on line. I think I see why he came to mind and a couple of his ideas interested me, but fairly or not the style triggers my allergy to critical theory. Might try him again some time.
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