Volkswagen's industrial brand world Autostadt in Wolfsburg is a showcase of the world car industry's technical and social evolution since more than a century. It is, however, sanitized as to its own history during Nazi Germany from the late 1930 to 1945: Darker facets, such as forced labor and weapons production, are documented in a small museum in the factory proper. The brand world, however, gives millions of visitors the impression that the company's history only starts in 1945. Bright sides are celebrated, uncomfortable events excluded. The standard jeep used by the German army, for instance, the country's first car produced on a Fordist production line, based on what later became the famous people's car, the beetle, is neither mentioned nor exhibited. Thus, while reflecting important feats, processes and components of the automobile industry as a whole, its industrial heritage value is deficient.

This paper is a mainly pragmatic response to utilitarian criticisms of the humanities. It first outlines political, public and practical fronts on which the humanities are under assault, identifying critics and their conspirators. Then, as a part of its defence of the humanities it expounds some of their central strengths. These range from the philosophical to the practical: lending critical perspectives to knowledge production, enriching lives, developing skills for uncertain and increasingly connected futures, improving science and supporting institutional income and credibility. Finally, the paper suggests that humanists must not only continue valuable conceptual and empirical disciplinary work but must add the very defence of the humanities to professional activity.

This article addresses the complexity of human geography, which is comprehensive and frequently interactive with other scientific disciplines. Economic, social, and ecological issues are core subjects in the development of human geography discipline, with technological drivers as one of its new features. Sustainability concerned and technology-oriented are two new characters of human geography in a fast-changing world, and the discipline is being reshaped by advanced technologies. Under the background of rapid economic and social changes and technological development, human geography will interact more with issues of industrial location, social equity, ecological factors, as well as information technologies. Future developments may include: theoretical innovations that give individuals more central place than before; technological innovations based on spatial data analyses; new application models that integrate emerging industries; and conceptual innovations that that place great emphases on ecological and environmental factors. Proposals on how to realize these changes are also presented, with new approaches to neo-location theory, spatial and space customization, and geographical format introduced.