Me++ - William J. Mitchell

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 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as Lilliput"; Marconi's massive mechanism of tower and kerosene engine has been
replaced by a palm-size cellphone.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.