false 77634 0 0 1215846 0262631768 9780262631761 5 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181948259m/1215846.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181948259s/1215846.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1215846.City_of_Bits_Space_Place_and_the_Infobahn 3.96 27 William Mitchell, from MIT, is one of the first scholars to rigorously examine this modern cliche, and draws heavily on the history of architecture, and urbanism. If you suspect there is truth in these truisms, and want to get beyond facile sloganeering prophesying an infintely ductile future, I highly recommend this book. Mitchell does a very job of explaining not just how things are likely to change, but also of examining historical precendents such as telephony, and to what degree previous prognostications came true.

]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 1996 640262 0262633221 9780262633222 4 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176616070m/640262.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176616070s/640262.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/640262.Placing_Words_Symbols_Space_and_the_City 3.14 21 Placing Words, Mitchell looks at the ways in which urban spaces and places provide settings for communication and at how they conduct complex flows of information through the twenty-first century city.

Cities participate in the production of meaning by providing places populated with objects for words to refer to. Inscriptions on these objects (labels, billboards, newspapers, graffiti) provide another layer of meaning. And today, the flow of digital information -- from one device to another in the urban scene -- creates a digital network that also exists in physical space. Placing Words examines this emerging system of spaces, flows, and practices in a series of short essays -- snapshots of the city in the twenty-first century.

Mitchell questions the necessity of flashy downtown office towers in an age of corporate Web sites. He casts the shocked-and-awed Baghdad as a contemporary Guernica. He describes architectural makeovers throughout history, listing Le Corbusier's Fab Five Points of difference between new and old architecture, and he discusses the architecture of Manolo Blahniks. He pens an open letter to the Secretary of Defense recommending architectural features to include in torture chambers. He compares Baudelaire, the Parisian flaneur, to Spiderman, the Manhattan traceur. He describes the iPod-like galleries of the renovated MoMA and he recognizes the camera phone as the latest step in a process of image mobilization that began when artists stopped painting on walls and began making pictures on small pieces of wood, canvas, or paper. The endless flow of information, he makes clear, is not only more pervasive and efficient than ever, it is also generating new cultural complexities.]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 2005 239294 0262633132 9780262633130 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173027268m/239294.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173027268s/239294.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/239294.Me_The_Cyborg_Self_and_the_Networked_City 3.67 15 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 scaling 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 Center 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. In Me++ Mitchell examines the effects of wireless linkage, global interconnection, miniaturization, and portability on our bodies, our clothing, our architecture, our cities, and our uses of space and time. 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. He 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.]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 2004 1504422 0262632055 9780262632058 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184381429m/1504422.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184381429s/1504422.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1504422.e_topia 3.40 10 As in his bestselling City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn, Mitchell floats his claims on a brisk stream of technological detail, much of it eye-opening, all of it clearly presented. Low-earth-orbit satellites; small-scale, wearable computer networks woven into underpants; artificially intelligent houses; and the logistics of high-tech pizza delivery are just a few of the phenomena that go into Mitchell's sketch of the emergent digital city. Casually erudite nods to urban theorists from Plato to Lewis Mumford to William H. Gates III round out the portrait. In the end, Mitchell shows us the city doing more or less what it has always done: evolving away from its simple, ancient roots toward increasingly mediated complexity. --Julian Dibbell

]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 2000 1504452 0262631601 9780262631600 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184381456m/1504452.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184381456s/1504452.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1504452.The_Reconfigured_Eye_Visual_Truth_in_the_Post_Photographic_Era 3.67 6 -- New York Times Book Review

Enhanced? Or faked? Today the very idea of photographic veracity is being radically challenged by the emerging technology of digital image manipulation and synthesis: photographs can now be altered at will in ways that are virtually undetectable, and photorealistic synthesized images are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from actual photographs.

Continuing William Mitchell's investigations of how we understand, reason about, and use images, The Reconfigured Eye provides the first systematic, critical analysis of the digital imaging revolution. It describes the technology of the digital image in detail and looks closely at how it is changing the way we explore ideas, at its aesthetic potential, and at the ethical questions it raises.]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 1992 3629994 0262633647 9780262633642 3 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3629994.World_s_Greatest_Architect_Making_Meaning_and_Network_Culture 2.67 3 World's Greatest Architect, William Mitchell offers a series of snapshots--short essays and analyses--that examine the systems of function and meaning currently operating in our buildings, cities, and global networks.

In his writing, Mitchell makes connections that aren't necessarily obvious but are always illuminating, moving in one essay from Bush-Cheney's abuse of language to Robert Venturi's argument against rigid ideology and in favor of graceful pragmatism. He traces the evolution of Las Vegas from Sin/Sign City to family-friendly resort and residential real estate boomtown. A purchase of chips leads not only to a complementary purchase of beer but to thoughts of Eames chairs (like Pringles) and Gehry (fun to imitate with tortilla chips in refried beans). As for who the world's greatest architect might be, here's a hint: he's also the oldest.]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 2008 1504418 0262631164 9780262631167 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184381424m/1504418.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1184381424s/1504418.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1504418.The_Logic_of_Architecture_Design_Computation_and_Cognition 3.50 2 The Logic of Architecture is the first comprehensive, systematic, and modern treatment of the logical foundations of design thinking. It provides a detailed discussion of languages of architectural form, their specification by means of formal grammars, their interpretation, and their role in structuring design thinking.

Supplemented by more than 200 original illustrations, The Logic of Architecture reexamines central issues of design theory in the light of recent advances in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and the theory of computation. The richness of this approach permits sympathetic and constructive analysis of positions developed by a wide range of theorists and philosophers from Socrates to the present.

Mitchell first considers how buildings may be described in words and shows how such descriptions may be formalized by the notation of first order predicate calculus. This leads to the idea of a critical language for speaking about the qualities of buildings. Turning to the question of representation by drawings and scale models, Mitchell then develops the notion of design worlds that provide graphic tokens which can be manipulated according to certain grammatical rules. In particular, he shows how domains of graphic compositions possible in a design world may be specified by formal shape grammars. Design worlds and critical languages are connected by showing how such languages may be interpreted in design worlds. Design processes are then viewed as computations in a design world with the objective of satisfying predicates of form and function stated in a critical language.

William J. Mitchell is G. Ware and Edythe M. Travelstead Professor of Architecture at Harvard University and a founder of the Computer Aided Design Group in Los Angeles. Among the books he has authored or coauthored are The Poetics of Gardens, The Art of Computer Graphics Programming, and Computer Aided Architectural Design. ]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 1990 134459 026269199X 9780262691994 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172047005m/134459.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172047005s/134459.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/134459.High_Technology_and_Low_Income_Communities_Prospects_for_the_Positive_Use_of_Advanced_Information_Technology 3.00 2
The book is organized into three parts. Part I examines the issues in their socio-technical, economic, and historical contexts. Part II--the core of the book--proposes five initiatives for using computers and electronic communications to benefit low-income urban communities:

- to provide access to the new technologies in ways that enable low-income people to become active producers rather than passive users;

- to use the new technologies to improve the dialogue between public agencies and low-income neighborhoods;

- to help low-income youth to exploit the entrepreneurial potential of information technologies;

- to develop approaches to education that take advantage of the educational capabilities of the computer;

- to promote the community computer: applications of computers and communications technology that foster community development.

Part III presents a synthesis of the various topics. Its main questions are, What are the prospects and problems of initiatives to enable the poor to benefit from the new technologies? and What federal, state, and municipal policies would enhance the prospects for success?

Contributors: Alice Amsden, Jeanne Bamberger, Anne Beamish, Manuel Castells, Joseph Ferreira, Peter Hall, Leo Marx, William J. Mitchell, Mitchel Resnick, Bish Sanyal, Donald A. Schön, Alan and Michelle Shaw, Michael Shiffer, Bruno Tardieu, Sherry Turkle, Julian Wolpert]]> 77634 3.59 99 17 1998 2380222 0471286664 9780471286660 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2380222.Digital_Design_Media 5.00 1 77634 3.59 99 17 326499 4.36 22 3 1994 1691501 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1691501.Me_The_Cyborg_Self_and_the_Networked_City 4.00 1 77634 3.59 99 17 2003