E-Topia: Urban Life, Jim--But Not as We Know It

For readers who've been crouched over their Commodore 64s for the past two decades, here's a user's guide to the perils and pleasures of a digitally shaped future. In this extended postscript to his well-received City of Bits, Mitchell, dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, chronicles the disparate effects of the digital revolution, arguing that we need to think of architecture and urban design in terms of virtual spaces and places. Offering short, evocative bits--or perhaps they're bytes--of his trademark tongue-in-cheek prose, Mitchell discusses how hubs of networked information will transform our cities, just as rail hubs and highway off-ramps generated urban development in the past. In the world of online commerce and 24-hour chat rooms, we're challenged to reinvent public places and reknit our social fabric for the information age. Importantly, Mitchell notes, we'll need to contend with physical consequences of virtual reality, such as the clustering of affluent silicon communities and the marginalization of the poor to places such as crime-ridden East Palo Alto. Much of the book, however, dwells superfluously on techno-gadgetry from wrist-worn stock quote devices to telerobots that, via a dial-up connection and a robotic arm, will enable people to make remote toast. Veterans of the digital frontier will find little new ground here, and others may cavil at the author's habit of writing about ""the late 1990s"" in the past tense, as if we've already been stranded along some darkened byway of the infobahn. Nonetheless, Mitchell's remains a sensitive and cogent voice amid the mounting decibels of technological hype. (Oct.)