I’m reading a book by Joel Kotkin called The City. The author writes that cities have three common aspects that stretch across time and space.
A city offers:
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1. A sacred space for its citizens to come together for purposes of spirituality, camaraderie, and devotion to that which is greater than the individual.
2. Security for its citizens.
3. An environment conducive to commerce.
Historically all of these are pretty easy to see. In contemporary times #1 has been supplanted to some degree by secular things like civic pride, community organizations, public gatherings, and sports.
In the context of the web, search engines (portals?) provide these three things for us now. Let’s see if this works:
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1. Sacred space - People gather together through search engines based on shared interests and communities.
2. Security - Users trust search engines to guide them safely through the web.
3, Commerce - I think this is the easiest one to see. Search engines facilitate 21st century commerce.
Am I stretching the analogy too far?
Physical location means less than ever and I wonder what the future of the city will be.
