City Of Bits Presentation

CITY OF BITS Space, Place and the Infobahn William J. Mitchell - 1996

William J. Mitchell (b. 1954) • Professor and academic Head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT MediaLab in Cambridge (USA) • Teaches architecture and media arts • Has written a series of books on topics related to design, architecture and computer technology. Education: • Master of Arts, University of Cambridge, UK • Master of Environmental Design, Yale University, USA • Bachelor of Architecture, University of Melbourne

There is a “growing domination of software over materialized form” Digital technology is turning traditional architectural theory and planning upside down. Mitchell describes: 1. the architecture and nature of cyberspace 2. the influence of cyberspace in the physical world

Why care about this? “Massive and unstoppable changes are under way, but we are not passive subjects powerless to shape our fates. If we understand what is happening, and if we can conceive and explore alternative futures, we can find opportunities to intervene, sometimes to resist, to organize, to legate, to plan, and to design”.

The architecture of cyberspace

Invisible world

The architecture of cyberspace

Public / private room • Public areas • Pay areas • Private areas

The architecture of cyberspace

Robot vision

The architecture of cyberspace

Timeflow

The architecture of cyberspace

Identity and social class “In the standard sort of spatial city, where you are frequently defines who you are. (…) But the Net’s despatialization of interaction destroys the geocode’s key. There is no such thing as a better address, and you cannot attempt to define yourself by being seen in the right places in the right company.” “Your own address is not pinned to a place, it is simply an access code, with some associated storage space, to some computer located somewhere on the Net. (…) The Net eliminates a tradition dimension of civic legibility.” “My representation on the Net is not an inevitability of biology, birth, and social circumstance, but a highly manipulable, completely disembodied intellectual fabrication; electronic cross-dressing is an easy and seductive game.”

The architecture of cyberspace

Identity and social class “My surrogates can potentially do much more than provide origins and destinations for messages; when appropriately programmed, they can serve as my semiautonomous agents by tirelessly performing standard tasks that I have delegated to them and even by making simple decisions on my behalf. (…) A smart agent might automatically contact other agents to reconcile diaries and arrange needed meeting at convenient times.” “While the Net disembodies human subjects, it can artificially embody these software gobetweens. (…) Can you always tell whether you are dealing with a real human being or with their cleverly programmed agents?”

Influence of cyberspace in the physical world

Connected body “Anticipate the moment at which all your personal electronic devices – cellular telephone, camcorder, electronic jogging shoes, medical monitoring system, pacemaker (…) – can seamlessly be linked in a wireless bodynet, (…) you will have acquired a collection of interchangeable, snap-in organs connected by exonerves. (…) Where they bridge to the external digital world, your nervous system will plug into the worldwide digital net. You will have become a modular, reconfigurable, infinitely extensible cyborg.”

Influence of cyberspace in the physical world

Connected architecture “Not so long ago, when the world seemed simpler, buildings corresponded one-to-one with institutions and rendered those institutions visible. (…) Today, institutions generally are supported not only by buildings and their furnishings, but also by telecommunication systems and computer software. And the digital, electronic, virtual side is increasingly taking over from the physical.” From physical to virtual: • from bookstores to bitstores • from stacks to servers • from galleries to virtual museums • from theaters to entertainment infrastructure • from schoolhouses to virtual campuses • from hospitals to telemedicine • from prisons to electronic supervision programs • from banking chambers to ATM and soft banks • from department stores to electronic shopping malls • from work to net-work

Designing the future

“Architects of the twenty-first century will still shape, arrange, and connect spaces (both real and virtual) to satisfy human needs. They will still care about the qualities of visual and ambient environments. They will seek commodity, firmness, and delight. But commodity will be as much a matter of software functions and interface design as it is of floor plans and construction materials. (…) Delight will have unimagined new dimensions.”

“For designers and planners, the task of the twenty-first century will be to build the bitsphere – a worldwide, electronically mediated environment in which networks are everywhere. (…) It will overlay and eventually succeed the agricultural and industrial landscapes that humankind has inhabited for so long.”

What others say: “Mitchell consistently follows a superficial "this is how it is, this is how it could change" approach for every emerging application from telemedicine to electronic cash but does not go into appreciable depth on any of them.” Curtis D. Frye

“Mitchell's book provides the reader with an accessible account of the way digital telecommunications technologies are transforming public space. The book's main strength is that it makes extensive use of examples in order to illustrate these changes; its biggest weakness is that it seldom ventures beyond simple description.” “Peppered here and there throughout City of Bits are sober moments of reflection on what might be called "the down-side" of the high-tech trend, where, for instance, he asks us to remember the technological have-nots as "we" speed toward "our" coming technotopia. But these moments are few and far between, and remain oddly underdeveloped..” Robert F. Nideffer