Exchanges in Real Spaces & Virtual Spaces

POST 12: SPACES & EXCHANGES - Exchanges in Real Spaces & Virtual Spaces: Two cartoons

 How far is the boundary between real and virtual spaces becoming increasingly blurred nowadays?

The first document is a cartoon drawn by Harvey Schwadron, where we see a man looking up to look at the window of a corner shop. There is a panel on the window that says "Ace Computers" and asks why "eco-tourists" would "travel and add to pollution while they could stay home and visit exotic travel web sites!" 

This means that today, thanks to the internet it is so easy to just look up anything and have it in front of us in mere seconds.  For example, you can easily look up "Thailand beaches" and scroll through the endless pictures of idyllic scenery all while being on your own sofa. Today, pollution and global warming is a big question and we all know that planes leave a big carbon footprint. It is an ironic cartoon that pokes fun at the limit we have today with reality and what is on our screens.

In the notion Spaces and Exchanges, we can easily place this cartoon. Between the neverending flux of tourists exchanging from one physical place to another, the cartoon gives the eco-tourists another way to stop commercial tourism, instead stay at home and visit a virtual space.

 Ace Computers, by Harvey Schwadron

This cartoon was made by Mark Dubovsky called Working From Home. We see two empty desks side by side with a computer on each, two men inside each computer are talking to each other. One asks if the other is going to work while the other responds that he isn't and that he is working from home. 

Here, the cartoonist is showing how today, working from home is a normal thing to do. The line is blurred when we try to put a limit on the online world. Using your computer to do everything from shopping to playing video games.  For example in this cartoon, the men are simply reduced to being on a computer screen. It shows us that everything we used to do yesterday, we can do the same but on the internet. 

Being somewhere physically is now optional, we can work from our computers at home instead of contributing to mass transport and pollution for example, or just because we have responsibilities in the household and cannot leave. Today we are seen obligated to work from home because of the covid19 pandemic. Working from home is something many people take as an option.  We can now exchange information, money virtually. 

Working From Home, by Mark Dubovsky