"My name is wjm@mit.edu (though I have many aliases),
and I am an electronic flâneur. I hang out on the
network."
Entertaining, concise, and relentlessly probing, City of
Bits is a comprehensive introduction to a new type of city, a
largely invisible but increasingly important system of virtual spaces
interconnected by the emerging information superhighway. William
Mitchell makes extensive use of concrete, practical examples and
illustrations in a technically well-grounded yet accessible
examination of architecture and urbanism in the context of the digital
telecommunications revolution, the ongoing miniaturization of
electronics, the commodification of bits, and the growing domination
of software over materialized form.
In seven chapters - Pulling Glass, Electronic Agoras, Cyborg Citizens, Recombinant Architecture,
Soft Cities, Bit Biz, and Getting to the Good Bits -
Mitchell argues that the crucial issue before us is not one of putting
in place the digital plumbing of telecommunications links and
associated electronic appliances, nor even of producing content for
electronic delivery, but rather one of creating electronically
mediated environments for the kinds of lives that we want to
lead.
William J. Mitchell is Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and
Sciences and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among the books he has authored
or coauthored are The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the
Post-Photographic Era, The Logic of Architecture, The Poetics of
Gardens, Digital Design Media, The Art of Computer Graphics
Programming, and Computer-Aided Architectural Design.
City of Bits WWW Team
© 1995-1997 MIT
