ChittyChittyBangBang Eco

A point that I found very interesting in Eco's article, The City of Robots, was the idea of a 'message city', a city entirely made up of signs functioning to communicate such as Las Vegas and Disney. I have never been to Vegas or Disneyland but I have been to Disney World and understand the absolute fake that Eco speaks of. I think this is a very intriguing topic to explore because I don't think many of us realize how many "fake cities" we have here in the U.S. Now I feel silly for never equating ghost towns and and old school western cities with those ideas. I liked Eco's quote: "...and i heard one tourist ask his wife if the children were real or 'fake' (and you could sense his psychological readiness to consider them, at will, extras, dummies, or moving robots of the sort we will see in Disneyland)" 202. These cities atmospheric perspectives are overwhelming and after a while you assume everything is a part of the act. For example; the political economy of cities such as Disney is genius; they use those atmospheric techniques to their economic advantage, "where you buy obsessively, believing you are still playing" 202.

This article reminds me of Habermas's ideas in his article, Modernity - An Incomplete Project. "That is to say, the term 'modern' appeared and reappeared exactly during those periods in Europe when the consciousness of a new epoch formed itself through a renewed relationship to the ancients - whenever, moreover, antiquity was considered a model to be recovered through some kind of imitation" 98. Architecture, art, art styles, and even the term 'modern' itself and what it represents has been reinvented time and time again throughout history. As a culture we constantly imitate the past, what we have seen, and what we know. These robot cities let technology take the place of realism, allow us to leave our humanity behind and enter a fantasy land. "The pleasure of imitation, as the ancients knew, is one of the most innate in the human spirit; but here we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it" 204. I think these robot cities are also an 'incomplete project'.