City of Bits: Space, Place and Infoban Book

This work 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 six chapters - "Pulling Glass", "Electronic Agoras", "Cyborg Citizens", "Recombinant Architecture", "Soft Cities" and "Building the Bitsphere" - 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 will want to lead.