There was an article in yesteraday's age about 'mash' or the reuse of Internet data to make data maps of geographical locales or other mappable regions. 'Mash' is interesting because according to Baudrillard, 'our society has become so reliant on models and maps that we have lost all contact with the real world that preceded the map. Reality itself has began merely to imitate the model, which now preceded and determines the real world' (from Dino Felluga, The Matrix: Paradigm of Postmodernism or Intellectual Poseur?' in Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in the Matrix, Penguin, Melbourne, p80.)
The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it service it. It is nevertheless the map that proceeded the territory — precession of simulacra — that engenders the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself. (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, 1994, p1.).
(form the Age) There are crime mash-ups (chicagocrime.com), dating mash-ups (datemashup.com), photoblog mash-ups (geobloggers.com), encyclopedia mash-ups (placeopedia.com) and even celebrity stalking mash-ups (gawker.com/stalker).
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