Even the escape from postmodern hyperspace is itself commodified and contained

Evidence

Yet escalator and elevator are also in this context dialectical opposites; and we may suggest that the glorious movement of the elevator gondola is also a dialectical compensation for this filled space of the atrium — it gives us the chance at a radically different, but complementary, spatial experience: that of rapidly shooting up through the ceiling and outside, along one of the four symmetrical towers, with the referent, Los Angeles itself, spread out breathtakingly and even alarmingly before us. But even this vertical movement is contained: the elevator lifts you to one of those revolving cocktail lounges, in which, seated, you are again passively rotated about and offered a contemplative spectacle of the city itself, now transformed into its own images by the glass windows through which you view it. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 143

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘passive rotation’ observation bears on whether the cognitive-map project wants distance or immersion — worth chasing later.