Post-Internet Architecture

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Googleplex in Silicon Valley

Abstract:

Google as a campus and company conveys an appropriately regional creed that Richard Barbrook has coined as the “Californian Ideology.” The fusion of greed and spiritual abstraction constitutes the Californian Ideology: an amalgamation of techno-utopianism, libertarian politics, and iconoclastic aesthetics local to the Valley.  The ideology has thrust the world into the Information Age, standing as a cultural relic and outcome of the countercultural movements of the 60s that were deeply moved by the Cold War military-industrial bureaucracy and the desire for personal discovery. Created by a group of people with similar socio-economic classes living in the Bay Area, the ideology was anti-institutional combining the individualist nature of libertarianism with the social and aesthetic propensities of a hippie. Reflections of space in localities like Silicon Valley inculcate the mysticism of space and architecture in the information age, as the Californian Ideology and Google are instead partial to the globalizing capacities of technology. This is represented by Googleplex and its simultaneously strategic and holistically playful approach to work.  

Google's inception traces back to humble origins, beginning in a rented garage and receiving financial backing from venture capitalists.  Its success story is deeply intertwined with the visionary founders, Stanford alumni Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The proximity of Silicon Valley to Stanford University has attracted a dense concentration of talent from across the globe to the software industry.

As Google prepared for its landmark initial public offering (IPO) in 2004, a strategic reassessment of its workplace dynamics ensued. Sergey Brin and Larry Paige who at the time had no reference to an office space, except for Stanford and their rented garage. Google held a design competition for the Googleplex that Clive Wilkinson and his architectural firm won based on their “proposal to create a diversified campus environment, integrating highly focused software engineering workspace within a support system of learning, collaboration, recreation, and food facilities." (Wilkinson) Clive embellishes and reflects Google’s brand and community identity by creating a corporate playground. Overlapping functions conflate, complicate and ground a community that is localized in space but cosmically pervasive through the imagination of space as embodying Google values.

Introduction: 

In this thesis, I delve into how the Googleplex Campus embodies the utopian vision of the Californian Ideology by serving as a physical manifestation of the centralization and democratization of information within its expansive confines.  Clive Wilkinson, the architect responsible for Google’s campus, employs various strategies to craft a utopian workplace environment that not only consolidates Google’s functions but also establishes its identity. The advent and design of the Googleplex epitomize architecture in an era circumscribed by informational connectivity and corporate insurgency. The campus serves as a tangible representation of the dual facets of the Californian Ideology, enabling the exchange of vast amounts of information on a global scale. Similar to the mathematical concept of a googol, representing an unimaginably large number followed by 100 zeroes, Googleplex occupies a surreal, dream-like space adorned with parks, pathways, and distinctive Google-themed elements. The corporate campus is marked by low-hanging signs and abundant natural surroundings spanning across 26 acres. Architect Clive Wilkinson's renovations and expansions further fortify the seclusion of Googleplex and its employees from external influences. Within the Googleplex, spatial arrangements echo the principles of the Californian Ideology, aiming to empower individuals, enhance personal freedom, and diminish the dominance of the nation-state. The main buildings of the campus are multifaceted, resembling a city, a home, a university, a playground, and a workspace simultaneously. Such utopian aspirations, akin to those embodied by Googleplex, subvert hierarchical structures prevalent in traditional corporate spaces. Yet, amidst its utopian facade, the Googleplex also serves as a stage where the company's internal dilemmas, particularly its capacity to  transform humans into mere data through algorithms, are both obscured and revealed. Visual representations of youthful energy and intelligent spatial organization within the Googleplex offer glimpses into the complex interplay between power dynamics and historical/geographical contexts intrinsic to Silicon Valley. Ultimately, the portrayal of the Californian Ideology through the Googleplex in it’s construction unveils a nuanced theory of utopia, one that simultaneously exposes and obscures Google's pervasive influence and the socio-cultural landscape of the valley.

Winchester Mansion

The Winchester Mansion functions as the physical antecedent to Googleplex. The mansion and the owner’s collection of properties in Silicon Valley, like Googleplex, house various spaces, ideas, and amenities that are seemingly eccentric to their relative functions. Here physical structures pioneer new ideas through isolation and estranged visions of power. Winchester’s renovations and expansions in and past her home embellish a regional understanding of space in Silicon Valley in its historical and cultural context. 

Sarah Winchester, owner of Winchester Mansion in San Jose, serves as a compelling primer for understanding the metaphysical elements of architecture in Silicon Valley. Winchester's narrative is one of profound loss and immense inheritance. In 1881, she endured the deaths of her mother, father-in-law, husband, and only child, marking a series of tragic events in her life. In the aftermath, Winchester found herself in possession of a staggering fortune, amassing an estimated 20 million dollars, which equates to approximately 600 million dollars by today's standards, along with a 50% stake in the Winchester Arms Company. This immense wealth positioned her as the wealthiest woman in the world at that time.

Following the loss of her loved ones, Winchester, now a widow, made a significant move from New Haven, Connecticut, to San Jose, California, in 1884. There, she promptly acquired an unfinished farmhouse, embarking on a complex and protracted journey of home renovation that would span until her passing in 1922. Driven by a deep-seated belief that she was haunted by the spirits of those who fell victim to the Winchester Rifle, she undertook these extensive renovations with the conviction that altering the structure of her home would confuse and placate these restless spirits.

For Winchester, her inheritance was both a privilege and a foreboding that prompted her to fuse her occult superstitions with architectural expansion. Unsurprisingly, many of these renovations were nonsensical, with staircases leading to nowhere, winding corridors with sudden drops, doors without openings, and windows without walls. Nevertheless, in her essay “title,” art historian Homay King clarifies that she was “more complex than the average Gilded Age tycoon.” She also designed many of her home’s innovative technologies, such as modern plumbing, hydraulic elevators, push-button gas lighting, insulation made of wool, and automatic plant waterers. These innovations were beyond her time and reflected an inventiveness that would link itself with what would, later on, come to be known as Silicon Valley. Winchester undermined her business sensibilities with the invention of her home, conveying a pioneering state of disorder where she entangled chaos with structure, and, containment with expansion. 

Continuously expanding her residence to fend off the malevolent spirits associated with the Winchester rifle, Sarah Winchester also strategically invested in surrounding properties, effectively preventing others from acquiring adjacent land. Her real estate ventures stand as a testament to the transformative power of capitalism and technology. Author Homay King elucidates Winchester's extensive property holdings, noting that "she owned a significant portion of what constitutes present-day San Francisco Peninsula and Silicon Valley, an equivalent in today's terms to hundreds of billions of dollars." In its blend of innovation and spiritual eccentricity, Winchester's home foreshadowed the techno-utopian landscape that would later define the region.

In a manner reminiscent of contemporary Silicon Valley, the Winchester Mansion embodies a techno-utopian ethos that blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality, intertwining business practices with ideological convictions. This architectural marvel prompts us to contemplate the notion of Utopia and its underlying principles. Utopia, inherently ideological and often regarded as unreal, hinges upon its capacity to challenge and elucidate narrative frameworks vis-à-vis structural frameworks. As Louis Marin elucidates in "Utopics: The Semiological Play of Textual Spaces" (1984), Utopia serves to both conceal and reveal fundamental conflicts in ideology, particularly concerning the relationship between evolving productive forces and prevailing social conditions of production.

Sarah Winchester's personal struggles, rooted in her inherited wealth and its contentious origins, were veiled behind a façade of visionary delusion and shrewd financial investments. Seeking to distance herself from both the ghosts of her past and the local community, she embarked on extensive renovations and property expansions. Over time, Winchester's social and psychological complexities became further entangled with the industrial expansions within the mansion. Despite her global renown as the wealthiest woman of her time, the Winchester Mansion remained internally disordered, histrionic, and deliberately isolated from its surroundings—a poignant testament to the formidable forces poised to shape the landscape of the Valley.

By situating the Winchester Mansion within various contexts—geographical, personal, ideological, and economic—we gain insight into the paradoxical nature of space as it attempts to reconcile the somber and violent origins of Sarah Winchester's wealth. The mansion's mystical containment and expansion stand in stark contrast to yet are intrinsically linked with her inheritance, providing her with a means to both divest from and indulge her fears through architectural design and development.

The fusion of greed and spiritualism embodied in Winchester's home serves as a quintessential manifestation of what Fred Turner terms the Californian Ideology—a fusion of libertarian politics, countercultural aesthetics, and techno-utopian visions. Like Winchester, adherents of the Californian Ideology espoused belief in the transformative potential of innovative and unconventional practices to liberate individuals from entrenched power structures. Thus, the Winchester Mansion serves as a precursor, heralding the techno-utopian ideals that would eventually shape the region, where the intersection of utopian ideology, avarice, innovation, and aesthetic eccentricity becomes fundamental to techno-corporate architecture and its cultural sway over the Valley.

The Californian Ideology's blend of hippie and libertarian philosophies spoke to the West Coast's aspiration to forge a new world and foster a sense of liberation from bureaucratic constraints. For libertarians, it was the embrace of the free market, while for hippies, it encompassed counter-cultural beliefs epitomized by slogan-able and psychedelic aesthetics. This ideological fusion intertwined politics, aesthetics, and technological determinism to envisage a utopian future that would come to symbolize the informational age.

The Googleplex epitomizes this structural ambiguity, situated on sprawling grounds in Silicon Valley, adorned with vibrant colors, and physically isolated from its surroundings. Internally, it caters to practical lifestyle needs, offering amenities such as gyms, laundry facilities, dry cleaners, massage parlors, and hair salons. However, akin to the impracticality of the Winchester Mansion, the Googleplex features extravagant elements such as full-sized spaceships, collapsible meeting rooms, grand pianos, massive television screens, rainbow staircases displaying live searches, and adult game rooms.

In Silicon Valley, both Winchester's home(s) and the Googleplex foreshadow the emergence of the Californian Ideology, which sought to centralize itself geographically in a seemingly decentralized world of digital information and power structures. Both structures embody a West Coast aspiration to subvert power dynamics through expansive designs that animate creativity and individual ideology. The Winchester Mansion thus serves as a blueprint for the Googleplex and the Californian Ideology, reflecting a regional ethos that integrates individual, social, and economic frameworks with architectural design. Consequently, the convergence of building technologies and research as both social and scientific endeavors has propelled Google and the Googleplex to become as dynamically influential and pervasive as they are today.

EMERGENCE OF SELFIE MUSEUMS

In today's interconnected world, the symbiotic relationship between consumers, products, and companies plays a pivotal role in shaping culture. At the heart of this dynamic lies the quest to predict and cater to people's desires, a pursuit that has become synonymous with modern AI technology. This drive to anticipate consumer preferences underscores the essence of virtually every AI program, representing what some may call "pandering technology."

When consumers interact with art or products, they inherently seek representation, affirmation, validation, and comfort. Whether admiring a painting or browsing through a product catalog, individuals yearn to see themselves reflected in what they consume, seeking validation of their identity and experiences. However, any disparity between the art presented and the audience's perceptions is often viewed as a negative, highlighting the pressure on museums and companies to align with consumer expectations.

This shift in consumer behavior has led to a transformation in the role of museums. Once regarded as educational institutions, museums have evolved into spaces focused on representation and equity. This evolution is exemplified by the rise of selfie museums in the 2010s, which effectively addressed the challenge of representation faced by traditional museums. By removing the artist from the equation and centering the experience around the audience's identity, selfie museums provided a solution to the thorny issue of representation, setting the stage for AI to follow suit.

However, this evolution has not been without its challenges. Like museums, companies have grappled with the dual mandate of selling products to a diverse audience while serving as representation allies to marginalized groups. This delicate balance has sometimes led to awkward results, as companies strive to navigate the complex landscape of cultural affinity and inclusivity.

In this context, silence can be a risky proposition for both museums and companies, as it may signal indifference or a lack of cultural alignment. To truly resonate with consumers, products must not only reflect their individual identities but also demonstrate a commitment to cultural values and representation.

In essence, the interplay between consumers, products, and companies serves as a powerful mechanism for informing, moving, and engaging culture. By understanding and embracing this dynamic, organizations can position themselves at the forefront of cultural change, driving meaningful connections and fostering inclusivity in an ever-evolving landscape.

Depop’s Interface + Why Gen Z is a Meme

Excerpt from woke college essay

Commodities, alongside history, have armed a cultural unconscious with aesthetics. The second-hand garment industry exemplifies this by commercializing artifacts and their associated histories. To delve into this, let's start with a definition. Thrifting, as I argue, involves purchasing a curated glimpse into the past. Its aesthetics revolve around finding belonging in the fabric of previous generations, often within historically marginalized spaces like thrift stores. This raises questions about the politics of aesthetics in an increasingly digital milieu.

The rise of reselling applications has led to a surge of young entrepreneurs entering the global marketplace. These individuals adeptly navigate thrifty methods to earn income while also supporting environmental sustainability and revitalizing vintage trends.

The collective consciousness of this milieu embodies a new-age libertarianism, challenging traditional notions of the working class. My generation exposes the harsh realities of individualism's impact on local economies, driving a desire to reconcile and advocate through both practice and aesthetics. This manifests politically, extending beyond fabric to online personas, from social media activism to solidarity with marginalized communities. However, this aesthetic practice can sometimes veer into appropriation and exploitation as individuals seek material alignment and social status.

Thrifting, historically a practice of low-income individuals, has been capitalized on and glamorized, leading to its integration into mainstream culture. Depop, a second-hand garment e-commerce application, exemplifies this phenomenon. Despite presenting as philanthropic and eccentric, Depop operates as a large corporation that dismisses humanities and histories, reshaping thrifting as a digital practice through its algorithm.

Furthermore, Depop's platform facilitates the reselling of thrifted items at significantly higher prices than found in traditional stores. This disparity underscores the commodification of thrifted goods within the digital marketplace. While thrift stores traditionally offer affordable options, Depop's algorithm-driven interface encourages sellers to mark up prices, capitalizing on trends and scarcity. This practice contributes to the redefinition of thrifted items as luxury goods, highlighting the shifting dynamics of consumer behavior and value perception. Additionally, the inflated prices on Depop reinforce the platform's role in perpetuating a culture of consumerism, where the pursuit of profit often overshadows the original ethos of thrifting as a means of sustainability and affordability.

This algorithmic interface transforms thrifting into a poor image, akin to a meme. Both rely on crowdsourced notions of ownership and value within a digital free market terrain prioritizing aesthetics, engagement, and profit over utility.

To explore this further, I will examine the gentrification of thrifting, particularly on digital platforms, using memes and digital subcultures as examples. I will define thrifting, trace its historical roots, and highlight its evolving topographical disposition. This evolution serves as a framework for understanding the movement of subcultural practices within a capitalist framework. Additionally, I will delve into the concept of a poor image through the lens of memes and their history. This will elucidate how thrifting has been reformatted as a poor image, demonstrating its ability to curate and animate individuals, products, practices, and histories. By analyzing Depop's mission, ethics, and consumer base against its algorithmic interface, I aim to reveal how the application fosters a poor image, standing as a revealing indicator of gentrification amidst the changing landscape of physical thrift stores.