Me++: The Cyborg Self And The Networked City

by William J. Mitchell

How the transformation of wireless technology and the creation of an interconnected world are changing our environment and our lives. With Me++ the author of City of Bit s 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says, as if "Brobdingnag had been rebooted as Lilliput"; Marconi's massive mechanism of tower and kerosene engine has been replaced by a palm-size cellphone.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.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Technology, Urbanism, Science, Urban Planning, Ebooks

259 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2003

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically, the book is about thinking of ourselves as cyborgs interacting in mutual and interdependent global networks. Actually, a lot of what he wrote about is a very natural jump for me to make. One of my many themes, as I've told my son countless times, is to think of people driving their cars as man-machine-complexes: cyborgs. I don't trust cyborgs. They take their cyborg-transportation-network-reality for granted. Too many times I've seen a person get hit by a cyborg and watched hir fragile ape body bounce off the car and into the air and down on to the ground, seemingly helplessly. Cyborgs in their transportation networks are interested in getting from point a to point b, and usually as fast as they can without getting into trouble. Apes intruding on their networks for bipedal nonsense are often viewed as a nuisance at best.

Likewise, here at my computer I've often thought of myself as part of a cyborg complex. However, Mitchell goes much further. He's basically saying many of us are more accurately thought of as cyborgs all the time. I'm not sure I'm willing to follow him to the end of that rainbow, but he has expanded and deepened my view of "the cyborg self". For example, his point about cellphones augmenting our voice and listening abilities at all times for most users. That is, instead of the domesticated ape hooking up at particular terminals/nodes to get hir cyborg on; zhe is always on. The ape's ears are at all times augmented, as a cyborg, with a cellphone close at hand, often as an extension of the body (when in pockets, or more vividly, when directly attached to ears as with bluetooth); and likewise the ape's larynx is similarly, at all times, augmented with global reach. Further, note that the ape's memory has been augmented. If we look at the written word as the first step in this cyborg process, the wikipedia i can access from my cellphone once again makes this augmentation more permanent. Or, as Mitchell might put it, the augmented memory enters a field of continual presence. He also says some particularly interesting things about GPS/GSI technologies and virtual reality.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

More from my obsession with body/space/practice. I loved Mitchell's "The Reconfigured Eye" from back in the 20th century, and got a kick out of the title of this one. It's another quck and descriptive read, a breezy sort of cybernonfiction that I find so much more gratifying than half of the sci-fi fiction that I read.

[Ashanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm currently re-reading this one, I think I'll probably give it a higher rating this time around.

[Kyle Cameron Studstill · Rating 5 out of 5]

cultural-historical evolution of technology and its impact on social structures