Marc Augé on space and place issues regarding subway practices in this interview:

"JPC: The subtitle of Non-lieux is "An introduction to an anthropology of the overmodern." What can you say about this phrase?

MA: The word "overmodern" is an attempt to suggest the logic of excess at work in our present-day modernity. There is first of all an excess of information, making us prisoners of the news--as if history had caught up with us in the form of news. Yesterday's news becomes history, already just barely perceptible. It ages even more rapidly than fashion, of which it is an accelerated form.

There is also an excess of space that paradoxically amounts to a shrinking of space: we now feel we live on a finite planet where all we can do is go around in circles. (Pascal's anguish is democratized, so to speak.)"

Why do I blog this? simply because this is one of the starting point for the Lift09 program. As Augé formulated, we're kind of stuck in present-prison, which made the future vanish as he also described in his latest book: "Où est passé l'avenir).

Where did the future go? Beyond robotic houses and 3d videophones, as well as deterministic mindset, are there any interesting changes under the glossy surface of iphone releases? That's what the Lift conference in 2009 will try to address.