xt-to one another without hierarchy or imposed modulation. The List This leads to my second point, which is an abstraction. What kind of order is found in the strip? Unmediated juxtaposition. Next to. This is the type of order found in a list. Driving the strip is like scanning a list. There is no fixed order of items to create expectations about what the next item will be. The items compete; they do not blend into a structured whole. You face a discontinuity where each item solicits your attention and participation for itself. Driving the strip you are scanning a list just as surely as you are scanning a list when you read the ads in the newspaper, or consult the telephone directory or surf the Web. What is a list? A list is not a sentence; it has no grammar or syntax. The grammar or syntax of a sentence requires that there be items with holes and connections that demand to be filled. Syntax defines items containing relations that are to be filled with other items: the verb demands a subject, the if-clause demands a then-clause, the cathedral demands the parish churches, the plaza demands the market. Such syntactic demands weaken when each item becomes isolated. Items on a list are independent of one another. The order of words in a sentence can be crucial to letting them be as meaningful words, but the order of items on my shopping list, or the order of stores in a mall or on a strip has no bearing on their being what they are. The order on the list or in the mall may be important for some effects: you are more likely to notice the items at the beginning of a list or the entrance to the mall. But one particular order or another is not essential to the being of the list or of the items that compose it. Items on a local strip list may be franchises of a world-wide brands such as McDonalds. Those represent a life-style, a sub-world, a corporation, but while this provides some depth to the item on the local list, the connection to a larger entity does not provide any syntax for the list as a whole, since lifestyles