Awards

• Winner of 2004 IEEE-USAB Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession 2004
• Winner of 2004 IEEE-USAB Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession</PrizeName> 2004
• Winner of <PrizeName>2004 IEEE-USAB Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession</PrizeName> 2004

Overview

"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 scalling 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says, as if ""Brobdingnag had been rebooted as Lilliput""; Marconi's massive mechanism of tower and kerosene engine has been replaced by a palm-size cellphone.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 Centre 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. 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. Mitchell 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."

Full Product Details

9780262633130

Table of Contents

Reviews

An exhilarating read. - Nature; [Mitchell's] book has a hard time sitting still as mere analog ink on plain paper. The text has the feel of a star professor's vibrant classroom lecture, or maybe a piece of new-media performance art.... This book is a total gas to read and the very definition of 'thought-provoking.' - Bruce Sterling, ; Sweeping, startling. - I. D. Magazine; An exhilarating, but also sometimes terrifying, account of how humanity is being reshaped by its new machines. This is the best tour guide yet written to the brave new world of the digital present. - Mike Davis, author of Dead Cities

Author Information

"William J. Mitchell is Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences and Head of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. He is the author of e-topia: ""Urban Life, Jim--but Not as We Know It,"" City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn, and The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era."

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