ME++

The Cyborg Self and the Networked City

William J. Mitchell

260 pages, parution le 19/11/2003

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Résumé

With Me++ the author of City of Bits and e-topia completes an informal trilogy examining the ramifications of information technology in everyday life. William Mitchell describes the transformation of wireless technology in the hundred years since Marconi--the scaling up of networks and the scaling down of the apparatus for transmission and reception. It is, he says, as if "Brobdingnag had been rebooted as Lilliput"; Marconi?s massive mechanism of tower and kerosene engine has been replaced by a palm-size cellphone. If the operators of Marconi?s invention can be seen as human appendages to an immobile machine, today?s hand-held devices can be seen as extensions of the human body. This transformation has, in turn, changed our relationship with our surroundings and with each other. The cellphone calls from the collapsing World Trade Center towers and the hijacked jets on September 11 were testimony to the intensity of this new state of continuous electronic engagement.

Thus, Mitchell proposes, the "trial separation" of bits (the elementary unit of information) and atoms (the elementary unit of matter) is over. With increasing frequency, events in physical space reflect events in cyberspace, and vice versa; digital information can, for example, direct the movement of an aircraft or a robot arm. In Me++ Mitchell examines the effects of wireless linkage, global interconnection, miniaturization, and portability on our bodies, our clothing, our architecture, our cities, and our uses of space and time. Computer viruses, cascading power outages, terrorist infiltration of transportation networks, and cellphone conversations in the streets are symptoms of a dramatic new urban condition--that of ubiquitous, inescapable network interconnectivity. He argues that a world governed less and less by boundaries and more and more by connections requires us to reimagine and reconstruct our environment and to reconsider the ethical foundations of design, engineering, and planning practice.

Prologue
Boundaries/Networks
Connecting Creatures
Wireless Bipeds
Downsized Dry Goods
Shedding Atoms
Digital Doublin'
Electronic Mnemotechnics
Footloose Fabrication
Post-Sedentary Space
Against Program
Cyborg Agonistes
Logic Prisons

Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

L'auteur - William J. Mitchell

is Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences, Head of Media Arts and Sciences, and Dean of the School of Architecture and Plannng at MIT.

Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	The MIT Press
Auteur(s)	William J. Mitchell
Parution	19/11/2003
Nb. de pages	260
Format	16 x 23,5
Couverture	Relié
Poids	515g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780262134347
ISBN13	978-0-262-13434-7