Do Non-Places Age? Rereading Marc Augé’s Surmodernity in the Era of AI

Introduction

When Marc Augé published Non-Lieux in the early 1990s, he offered anthropology a conceptual tool for thinking about spaces that had long been overlooked because of their banality. Airports, highways, supermarkets, and hotel chains were not marginal phenomena but emblematic sites of what he termed surmodernité. Rather than opposing tradition and modernity, Augé described a regime of excess: of movement, of information, and of individualized solitude. More than three decades later, the concept of non-place remains widely cited. Yet its continued use often assumes that the spaces Augé described have remained structurally unchanged. This article proposes a different approach. By rereading the prologue of Non-Lieux from today’s perspective, it asks whether the non-places of the early 1990s can still be understood in the same terms, or whether they themselves now demand to be questioned.

The Prologue as a Phenomenology of Surmodernity

Augé’s prologue follows Pierre Dupont through a sequence of impeccably functioning systems: an ATM, a tollbooth, a check-in counter, passport control, duty-free shops, and finally an airplane seat. Each step proceeds without friction. Identity is verified through cards and tickets; access is granted; movement resumes. Dupont experiences relief once his documents are in order, feeling that he has “nothing to do but wait for the sequence of events” (Augé, 1995). The affective tone is strikingly calm. There is no overt alienation. On the contrary, solitude is experienced as freedom, and the absence of interpersonal demands as comfort.

This vignette is not anecdotal but exemplary. The prologue functions as more than narrative decoration; it offers a condensed phenomenology of surmodernity itself. What appears here is a world structured by regulated circulation, contractual encounters, and a dense environment of written instructions. Language is omnipresent, yet almost exclusively in graphic or textual form. Screens, signs, and printed messages guide action while minimizing conversation. Even human exchanges are reduced to brief confirmation, often accompanied by silence or a nod. This is the experiential horizon within which the concept of non-place takes shape.

What Non-Places Were in the Early 1990s

Augé famously defines non-places as spaces that cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity (Augé, 1995). Unlike anthropological places, they do not integrate individuals into shared narratives. Instead, they produce solitary trajectories governed by impersonal systems. Crucially, these systems are mute. They issue instructions, display information, and authorize passage, but they do not respond in any meaningful sense. Their language is directive rather than dialogical.

Anonymity plays a central role here. Dupont is not recognized as a person with a biography; he is accepted as a valid user. His identity is episodically verified, then bracketed. The non-place does not seek to know him. It merely checks whether he satisfies the conditions of access. In this sense, the experience of non-places in the 1990s is characterized by interchangeability and silence, even as it depends on a dense semiotic field.

Repeating the Journey Today

If one attempts to repeat Dupont’s journey today, the continuity is immediately disrupted. Tickets, boarding passes, and cash have largely been replaced by smartphones, biometric verification, and continuous data processing. Signs still exist, but they are increasingly supplemented—or displaced—by interfaces that respond to user input. More importantly, systems no longer remain silent. They notify, remind, suggest, warn, and adapt.

The contemporary traveler is not merely identified but anticipated. Past behavior informs present access; preferences are inferred; deviations are flagged. While anonymity has not been replaced by social recognition, it has given way to algorithmic familiarity. The individual is no longer interchangeable in the same sense, yet remains socially anonymous. This shift alters the experience of non-places at a fundamental level. What was once a sequence of readable instructions has become an interactive environment in which action triggers response.

This transformation is not merely technological. It reshapes how space is inhabited and how agency is perceived. Dupont’s pleasure in being “sorted out” depended on the system’s indifference. Contemporary systems, by contrast, appear attentive. They address users directly, often by name. The solitude of non-places is no longer silent but conversational, even if the exchange remains asymmetrical and non-reciprocal.

Are We Still in Surmodernity?

If the experiential texture of non-places has changed in this way, the question that follows is not only empirical but conceptual. Does surmodernity still name our present condition, or has it become a historical descriptor of a particular phase? One might argue for continuity: circulation, functional space, and weakened social bonds persist. Yet the form these elements take has shifted. The excess Augé described was primarily an excess of inscription and movement. Today, it increasingly appears as an excess of interaction and anticipation.

Rather than discarding the concept, it may be more productive to historicize it. Surmodernity captured a moment in which systems organized experience through mute regulation. That moment has not disappeared, but it has been overlaid by new modes of engagement that Augé could not yet observe. Non-places have not vanished; they have aged.

Conclusion

Augé questioned anthropological places by revealing the significance of non-places in late twentieth-century life. Revisiting Non-Lieux today suggests that the same critical gesture must be repeated. The non-places of the 1990s were themselves historically situated, shaped by specific technologies and patterns of interaction. Rereading Augé’s prologue from the present does not invalidate his analysis; it extends it. It shows that even spaces defined by transience and anonymity are subject to historical transformation. If anthropology is to remain attentive to everyday experience, it must once again learn to discern what has been there all along, quietly changing under our feet.

References

Augé, M. (1995). Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (J. Howe, Trans.). Verso.