I guess the change that accompanies this is the fact that once you construe your concrete city in bubble-terms, it becomes quite easily changed, and in fact ephemeral -- rents go up, developers move in, scenes shift, the money flow diverts and suddenly all of your friends have moved to, for the sake of argument, Lisbon.

I suppose you become an element in a gypsy city, then, a city which is divisible and changeable but not precisely killable, because its existence was so tenuous in the first place. I find the idea romantic but not convincing, because we all still have to eat and breathe air, and our vegetables have to come from somewhere. Local is where the dirt is.

Well, I get my vegetables from a local market, but they're flown in from all over the world. It's actually almost impossible to find locally-grown vegetables, unless you have your own patch or go to a very chi-chi bourgeois organics place with premium prices.

I imagine that's more the case where you are than where I am, where one can live pretty well and pretty cheaply off of farmer's markets and cooperative organic groceries. (Then again that's only if you use a definition of local that encompasses most of the western seaboard of the United States.) The issue is kind of beside the point, as where and how your veg is supplied to you is determined by the economic policies of your local government, which in turn has an effect of the health and well-being of you, the happy citizen of wherever you happen to be living at the moment. Not to mention exactly how fluid your bubble-japan is, as determined by zoning and city planning and development policies, and on and on.

But I understand that trans-nationalism is a spiritual thing, unconcerned with the slightly more fixed localities of people who don't bear the burden and privilege of creative rootlessness. It's not really a class thing because you can do it on the cheap, right? (I just don't know where to put my spite these days.)

Cities will never stop being cities. Perhaps the internet is just a new city, one that everyone can get the bus to.

It has its areas.

The main street - ebay / google / hotmail / youtube /asos

The seedy parts of town - porn etc etc

The arty boutiques - blogs / fashion independents

Art gallerys - Flickr and the like

poppycock? i suppose it is, but worth a try.

wwb

Yes, I think the digital experience is really one of the most striking changes to the texture of the 'expat' lifestyle. I'm Australian, and I lived in Europe in the eighties, and here I am living in Europe again in the noughties. But it's really an entirely different experience. Back in the eighties, I was totally isolated from Australia. Phone calls were a pound a minute. Plane tickets were prohibitively expensive. If I really wanted to know what was going on in Australia, I could take a trip to the embassy to read week-old newspapers in the reading room. Communication with family & friends took place in letters, that took a week or two to get there. It was very easy to totally lose touch. And absolutely necessary to engage with the environment you physically found yourself in.

Now, of course, I read the newspapers and watch video online, to the extent that I almost know more of what's going on in Australia than when I lived there. And I'm in constant touch with people via email/messaging/skype etc. I feel none of the isolation from my Australian life. But I think that has its downsides as well. You do more easily end up in a bubble existence, without the need to engage with the culture that surrounds you. And I think that's true of the Internet in general. Whatever you read/do online, it's not being imposed, you're not being challenged or forced, rather you're giving in to your own tendencies/prejudices. It's the difference between reading a paper-version of a newspaper or magazine, where something might catch your eye and you end up reading stuff you wouldn't normally, and reading an online newspaper, where you just click on the headline that interests you.

"you're not being challenged or forced, rather you're giving in to your own tendencies/prejudices. It's the difference between reading a paper-version of a newspaper or magazine, where something might catch your eye and you end up reading stuff you wouldn't normally, and reading an online newspaper, where you just click on the headline that interests you."

What you describe seems to demand a sort of digital -derive- which surely the general idea of web 'surfing' provides. I really don't think i need an editor telling me what to think, or if i do it's as a refreshing contrast.

I really don't think i need an editor telling me what to think

I'm not so sure. Yes, the Internet is fantastic in terms of the huge wash of information and our ability to pick and choose and edit the flow ourselves. But it's important to recognise that something is lost in this model as well. What's lost is the curator, pointing us in directions we wouldn't have thought of by ourselves. Instead, we get entrenched in our positions and outlooks and aesthetics.

'Cities will never stop being cities.'

Yes quite, the point is, the cities will infiltrate and weave themselves into the countryside until the 'pure' rural idyll becomes totally fringe. The city is already 'winning' (more than 50% urban population globally), the question is more, 'what will be left'?

And what are the consequences of 'the city' bleeding into all social crevices, niches and sectors?

...did you know Disneyland has its own petting zoo?

There are two pigs in the Gorlitzer Farm, one is Pippi. I think Pippi is the smaller one with white on her back, featured in the photo of the girls, rather than the one I'm petting here. But they're in the same pigpen.

Last month, when I was in the farm, a drunken boy jumped over the fence and started riding Pippi (or the other one) like a horse. The farm attendants got very angry and chased him, quite rightly, out of the zoo.

Pippi makes a cameo appearance in my novel, there's a reference to "greedy Pippi snouting open and guzzling down goose eggs".

I just find pictures of you with animals amusing! I have no idea why. Awww, look at Momus petting the huge pig! You can momentarily stun me with pictures of you with animals, or just pictures of baby animals if you were to ever argue with me.

牧場へいきたい.

Marxy is one sexy BEAST. Momyus looks good, too.

Interesting video. I do think he is a bit off when describing the Internet as a digital, alternative city. Seems a bit 90's cyberspace to me.

The web of today seems points in the complete opposite direction of immersion into a digital world and instead is about enhancing experiences in the city with technology and concepts from the digital (for good and bad) - organizing, documenting, synchronizing, linking, re-programming experiences in the city - which of course transforms the notion of it. Partly driven by companies needs for geo-tagged advertising

It's the opposite of the virtual reality discourse that tried to enhance the computer experience with concepts from the city.

I can relate to what you say about the city becoming local though
I live in Malmö, just a few blocks away from the Krets gallery where you did your "Down with fun" lecture which, as you know, is a compact area in a compact city. The Internet enables living in these kind of compact areas, thse bubbles without missing all that goes on outside fo them. The city being distilled down to only the pure social interactions.

I think that especially the younger generations growing up with the internet today will use it more to connect with people and events in their proximity (their micro-city) than discovering new, digital worlds.

It's very interesting to se what happens with a city when it becomes an web of layered micro cities. What's the relation between these neighboring micro cities, how are conflicts created and resolved, etc...