traveling without leaving

Few articles to read…

REAL TIME
By JASON FRY
Traveling Without Leaving
The Computer and Cellphone Were in Chicago, But the Virtual World Was Perfectly Familiar | Wall Street Journal Online

Excerpt:

Arriving at my downtown hotel, I dropped my bag on the other bed, dumped everything out my pockets, looked out both windows (an airshaft and a level of a parking garage, respectively), plugged my cellphone in to recharge, hooked up the spool of Ethernet cable the front desk had lent me and fired up my laptop. […] After settling in, I wrote and edited and emailed and sent IMs as always, but twice had to explain, in the middle of perfectly ordinary conversations, that I was 700 miles away from where I normally was. That startled the person I was IMing with — and truth be told, it surprised me a bit too. Because as long as I was staring at the screen, the only substantive difference between my Chicago hotel room and my New York office was the chair. Wasn’t I in the same place I always was? After all, my work habits, conversations with people and even my morning perusal of favorite personal links were the same. It was only when I disconnected my New York desktop that things seemed odd — I’d look around the hotel room like someone waking up in a new place and think, “Oh yeah, Chicago.” This curious sense of dislocation isn’t just a function of computers.

Thank you Becca + Dave for the info!

Also (in French):

Le temps de survie des objets errants
Impondérables.
Laurent Wolf
Mardi 24 octobre 2006 | Le Temps

Excerpt:

Il y a des trottoirs inspirés sur lesquels apparaissent des objets divers, certains en parfait état. […] Certains objets ont une longue survie urbaine. Ainsi ce sommier apparu aux environs du 15 septembre et qui a tenu un mois. Armature de métal, lattes de bois, modèle standard, posé sur la tranche contre la vitrine de l’opticien voisin qui s’est empressé, dès l’ouverture, de le pousser vers la vitrine d’à côté. Le sommier n’a pas excité la convoitise, si ce n’est qu’il a perdu une latte par jour jusqu’à n’être qu’une armature de métal traînant sa langueur de long en large. Car le voisin de l’opticien l’a poussé vers le bord du trottoir, d’où un automobiliste l’a délogé pour parquer son véhicule. Il est ensuite allé de droite à gauche, d’abord devant un guichet automatique de banque, ensuite au milieu d’un parking de motocyclettes, puis à 2 mètres d’une terrasse de bistrot où il faisait mauvais effet, pour finir près d’une barrière de chantier.

Thank you Nicolas!