A journey in a mirage
In February 2023 I “browsed” Dubai. “I wrote “browse”, because Dubai has everything of a virtual world. This concept city was planned and built over three generations, in the middle of the desert. Everything is carefully drawn, the road junctions, the railways, the blocks of buildings with their ponds and their palm trees. In this world of developers we feel like we are in a blueprint or an architect’s model, like those that are proudly displayed in different public places. Or in a science fiction universe. Because the ambition of the current sheik is to offer the world “the best of the future” as we can read in his book and on the signs visible throughout the city. In Dubai, order reigns and everything is controlled. The screens are everywhere, and so are the police. Will this become our reality? What kind of control and artificiality will we accept to live under? Perhaps one day archaeologists will find the city buried in the sand, or it will disappear like a mirage, as suddenly as it appeared.
