The Digital and the Physical

“Man in the electronic age has no possible environment except the globe and no possible occupation except information-gathering.” (Marshall McLuhan)

Change is happening at The Bays at a time when the boundaries between the digital and the physical are blurring. There is a rise in demand for the ‘authentic’ and this is transcending across platforms, the experience economy is expanding through ever-evolving media platforms at the same time as demand grows for deeper meaning in places. Imagining and developing The Bays offers a timely opportunity to lead and to innovate, in and around the physical and the virtual.

A balance between cultural and commercial activation can evolve into disruptive ideas that transform Sydney into an exemplar of new, co-active models of business and culture. Cultural venues can act as magnets for new affiliated commercial activities, for alliances with existing commercial activities and for incubator enterprises. Culture, creative entrepreneurs, remixes and disruptions could characterize The Bays.

“The tribalizing power of the new electronic media, the way in which they return us to the unified fields of the old oral cultures, to tribal cohesion and pre-individualistic patterns of thought, is little understood. Tribalism is the sense of the deep bond of family, the closed society as the norm of community.” (Marshall McLuhan)

Whereas locality used to be the common tribal ground, McLuhan’s ‘tribes’ are globally connected yet locally hidden, invisible in multicultural and socio-economic complexity. Authentic civic places can play an important role in making local complexity visible through engagement, through the pull of the real.

“The role of the artist is to create an Anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment.” (Marshall McLuhan 1964)

Perhaps ‘place’ is a necessary respite from the ‘digital’, McLuhan’s anti-environment.

Photo Author: gagilas / photo on flickr
License: Attribution-ShareAlike License