TRAVEL AND LEISURE

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THE GEO-CHALLENGE: ALL THE WORLD IS A MALL

Nature shapes culture and in turn, culture inevitably alters nature. When will we arrive at the day that we find ourselves hiking up the idyllic mountainside and, expecting to finally reach the serenity of an open field or babbling brook (that we have only seen in some unearthed Gates/Corbis image collection) and then low and behold - do our eyes deceive us? No. Erected in front of us is a brand new earth-camoflage structure, an earthy-topia none other than the Body Shop. And it finally all makes sense, we are all visiting nature so we can recreate some idea of nature IN BUSINESS FORM. We all need to invent our own way to sell our sense of nature and natural beauty, no matter how unnatural (whatever that is) it may be. Nature makes you feel good. Unfortunately, we have put nature by the wayside. Instead of being outside enjoying nature, you can find us in the mall buying products that may express our love of and for nature, and may show our sense of social responsibility for the earth.

Dedicated Mallers may let you in on a hidden secret: the whole world has become a mall. No longer is the mall an economically segregated safe place to send our kids after school. Now, it is everything, from the bush in your backyard, to what is left of the polar icecaps, and it is the Body Shop hidden within the bushy hills of Muir Woods, California. If you like nature, you LOVE the mall of nature. Come shop with us! Places like the Mall of America have turned the mall's interior into a representation of the outside world, jungles and all.

Like Myspace, the mall is not only a place to network socially, but a place to live in. Now, mobile commerce creates a world-wide datastructure built on the premise of consuming. The mall is everywhere. The human’s place in space is marked by consumption - the locations of spending habits are tracked and sold back to the seven-firm oligopolies, For Their Information (FTI) in an endless cycle of consumption. Space’s main function and pervasive form is now Information Space. Mall is the very essence of how culture will define itself. A picture is assembled that confirms a continuity between the home and the market-place, between various levels of artifice and nature and between divergent and often distinct geographic locations.