Mediacology

[youtube]kTyks-IRFPY[/youtube]

Forget Vegas, forget Disney. Meet Dubai. Nice beach-front property, just a stone’s throw from Iran and WWIII. God willing for oil economy investors, may the Straits of Hormuz remain open and sea levels even.

If the above promotional video isn’t convincing enough (yes, it’s real), read a sample of Mike Davis‘ remarkable piece on Dubai, sci-fi capital of the world:

New Left Review - Mike Davis: Fear and Money in Dubai:

Welcome to a strange paradise. But where are you? Is this a new Margaret Atwood novel, Philip K. Dick’s unpublished sequel to Blade Runner or Donald Trump on acid? No. It is the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai in 2010. After Shanghai (current population 15 million), Dubai (current population 1.5 million) is the planet’s biggest building site: an emerging dreamworld of conspicuous consumption and what the locals boast as ‘supreme lifestyles’. Despite its blast-furnace climate (on typical 120° summer days, the swankier hotels refrigerate their swimming pools) and edge-of-the-war-zone location, Dubai confidently predicts that its enchanted forest of 600 skyscrapers and malls will attract 15 million overseas visitors a year by 2010, three times as many as New York City. Emirates Airlines has placed a staggering $37-billion order for new Boeings and Airbuses to fly these tourists in and out of Dubai’s new global air hub, the vast Jebel Ali airport. [1] Indeed, thanks to a dying planet’s terminal addiction to Arabian oil, this former fishing village and smugglers’ cove proposes to become one of the world capitals of the 21st century. Favouring diamonds over rhinestones, Dubai has already surpassed that other desert arcade of capitalist desire, Las Vegas, both in sheer scale of spectacle and the profligate consumption of water and power.

And now for some video to flesh out the story:

Technorati Tags: Dubai, Mike Davis

Dubai Waterfront promo video:
[youtube]U8sShfoHnQ8[/youtube]
[youtube]vGaRLsFL1L4[/youtube]
We are the world, we are a hotel…
[youtube]fsyTsQhvvC0[/youtube]
Globalize this:
[youtube]MqNgfV3a9w8[/youtube]