Unlike Google Maps, Russia's Yandex Карты is much more tourist friendly in that it does not blur your face away when you have been caught on camera! Yandex does not seem to uphold an evenly strict privacy policy as Google is imposed to do. A big help, as it assists me in taking touristic snapshots wherever I go.

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

L'viv, Ukraine. August, 2010.  It's a sunny morning in L'viv, the sun has just touched the streets.
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A fellow MoM'er already wrote a good review on the PhD thesis What You See Is What You Feel by Koert van Mensvoort. Read the MoM review here and download the full book here. I would like to give an extension to this review with my own thoughts.

Although the thesis is done at the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) the thesis provides a "social-cultural context" which provides the reader a lightweight but still refreshing introduction to media theories in relation to simulation, virtuality and reality in the era of the homo desktopus (p. 20) - though I think the homo desktopus is increasingly less suitable due to ubiquitous computing (more on that later). When I read the prologue, Baudrillards concepts of Simulacra and Simulations and McLuhan's technological determinism in The Medium Is The Message were the two main lines of thought. Mcluhan's views could be found in where Van Mensvoort states we increasingly do not perceive media as media anymore but part of our experience interaction; media is the message. We have become passive to media, as we are not actively breaking down mediation as it has become inherent. But I thought it was strange they were not mentioned anywhere. It was when reading the epilogue when it became clear that Van Mensvoort actually shares McLuhan's definition of media (p. 123). Overall the theory provides an interesting read for everyone as simulation and reality is very interesting indeed, and provides a superb example of combining media theory with technical research and application.[....]