Yet AirSpace is now less theory than reality. "What if this seemingly accidental-and usually regretted-homogenization were an intentional process, a conscious movement away from difference toward similarity?" Schwarzmann’s cafe phenomenon recalls what the architect Rem Koolhaas noticed in his prophetic essay "The Generic City," from the 1995 book S,M,L,XL: "Is the contemporary city like the contemporary airport-‘all the same’?" he asks. CortadosĪs the geography of AirSpace spreads, so does a certain sameness. Itinerant entrepreneurs, floating on venture capital, might head to a Bali accelerator for six months as easily as going to the grocery store. Well-off travelers like Kevin Lynch, an ad executive who lived in Hong Kong Airbnbs for three years, are abandoning permanent houses for digital nomadism.
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It’s possible to travel all around the world and never leave AirSpace, and some people don’t.
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You might not even realize you’re not where you started. Changing places can be as painless as reloading a website. The homogeneity of these spaces means that traveling between them is frictionless, a value that Silicon Valley prizes and cultural influencers like Schwarzmann take advantage of. We could call this strange geography created by technology "AirSpace." It’s the realm of coffee shops, bars, startup offices, and co-live / work spaces that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go: a profusion of symbols of comfort and quality, at least to a certain connoisseurial mindset. Think of the traffic app Waze rerouting cars in Los Angeles and disrupting otherwise quiet neighborhoods Airbnb parachuting groups of international tourists into residential communities Instagram spreading IRL lifestyle memes or Foursquare sending traveling businessmen to the same cafe over and over again. Yet technology is also shaping the physical world, influencing the places we go and how we behave in areas of our lives that didn’t heretofore seem so digital. It’s easy to see how social media shapes our interactions on the internet, through web browsers, feeds, and apps. "It creates you going to the same place all over again." Digital platforms like Foursquare are producing "a harmonization of tastes" across the world, Schwarzmann says. Rather, they have all independently decided to adopt the same faux-artisanal aesthetic. It’s not that these generic cafes are part of global chains like Starbucks or Costa Coffee, with designs that spring from the same corporate cookie cutter. The new cafe resembles all the other coffee shops Foursquare suggests, whether in Odessa, Beijing, Los Angeles, or Seoul: the same raw wood tables, exposed brick, and hanging Edison bulbs. "Every coffee place looks the same," Schwarzmann says. But over the past few years, something strange has happened. Then he heads toward the nearest suggested cafe.
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Digital platforms like Foursquare are producing "a harmonization of tastes."Įvery time Schwarzmann alights in a foreign city he checks the app, which lists food, nightlife, and entertainment recommendations with the help of a social network-augmented algorithm. While traveling, he turns to Foursquare for recommendations about where to eat and drink. The company’s clients range across Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, so Schwarzmann often finds himself moving between poles of the global economy. I gor Schwarzmann is the German co-founder of Third Wave, a strategy consultancy based in Berlin that works with small-scale industrial manufacturers.