A Planetary World Network
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A Planetary World Network
While Hole in Space opened only one portal, AUDC's Windows on the World opens many, siting multiple portals in multiple cities. The result is a true world planetary network, based not on capital and planning but on chance encounters. By building many portals, Windows on the World avoids the initial traffic problem created by the novelty of Hole in Space.
Windows on the World begins with the Situationist premise that the last thing we need is the modernist quest for new technology. Modernism blithely ignores the basic conditions that structure daily life and instead focuses on novelties that have little effect on reality. Debord was right to kick Constant out of the Situationist International. Paris did not need his New Babylon, it needed off switches on its light posts. We propose to do the same for the Net.
There is nothing new about the Internet. It is an invention of the 1960s. What is needed now more than ever is a radical reconsideration of the logic behind the already existing. We accept the scale, setting, and privatization of telematic communication too easily and have ignored the fact that these conditions limit the ways by which we communicate. Based on readily available video conferencing technology, Windows on the World provides an experience fundamentally different from this technology’s traditional application.
Windows on the World is a formulary for a new urbanism that alleviates boredom with the city and encourages communication in public, rather than private settings. It facilitates open, spontaneous, and democratic exchanges between groups while requiring no special skills to operate. Participants share both their differences and similarities through direct interaction, replacing the myth of global hegemony and projected stereotypes with personal experience.
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