e-topia
book review by Ron Mader

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E-topia is a joyous, philosophical joy ride on the Internet.

Author William Mitchell provides a history lesson about the role of information and technology. He examines the implications of the new digital infrastructure and provides some not-so-futuristic examples of things to come, including wearable technology and new urban infrastructure.

Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mitchell makes a convincing case that we must extend the definitions of architecture and urban design to include virtual realities as well as physical ones. His proposals are creative and practical and show the possibilities of increased interconnectivity on both a personal and a global scale.

While the entire book is a tour-de-force, the last two chapters of the volume shine. "The Economics of Presence" neatly summarizes synchronistic and asyncronistic communication. "Lean and Green" takes on the topic of green building techniques. E-topia is a superb introduction to the digital revolution at hand.

Excerpts from e-topia:

Architecture is no longer simply the play of masses in light. It now embraces the play of digital information in space.

It is, I suggest, a moment to reinvent urban design and development and to rethink the role of architecture. The payoffs are high, and so are the risks. But we have no choice; we cannot realistically opt out. We must learn to build e-topias -- electronically services, globally linked cities for the dawning debut de K.

Informatization is following hard on the heels of electrification, with social consequences that are at least profound. As the enginneres figure out the technology, and the venture capitalists keep the IPOs popping, tiny telecommunications and information-processing devices are becoming as commonplace as lightbulbs and electric motors... The early industrial age of dumb devices is over; things now tirelessly, twenty-four/seven, think and link.

Peripheral information is by no means unimportant; in fact, it plays a crucial role in establishing the character of a place and sustaining your relationship to it. When a room has a window, for example, it provides a continuous flow of information about the external environment -- the cycles of day and night, the movement of sunlight and shadows, the succession of bright and cloudy moments, and the alternation of dry and rainy patches. You rarely pay explicit attention to all this, but you are peripherally aware of it, and you feel uncomfortably isolated if you are cut off from it.

Whereas physical meeting places depend for their success on centrality within densely populated areas, virtual venues need not. A traditional auction house, for example, is a conveniently localed place where buyers and sellers meet, at specified times, to negotiate prices and exectue transations; participation in auctions is limited by accessibility. But an online auction site such as Ebay.com connects widely scattered buyers and sellers who would never otherwise have a chance to encounter one another.

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Ron Mader lives in Mexico City and travels frequently throughout the Americas. He hosts the award-winning Planeta.com: Eco Travels in the Americas website -- http://www.planeta.com -- and is the author of the Mexico: Adventures in Nature guidebook and the Exploring Ecotourism in the Americas resource guide.

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