e-topia (Hardcover)

by William J. Mitchell (Author) "DOA at Y2K! Whatever happened to the city as we know it?..." (more)
Key Phrases: digital telecommunications infrastructure, backroom space, online meeting places, World Wide Web, Hong Kong, Main Street (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
This little book begins with a big claim: the city is dead, and cyberspace killed it. But Mitchell, it turns out, is too intelligent an observer to really mean anything quite so drastic. Despite his weakness for bold, catchy statements (and it is a weakness), this MIT architecture professor has both feet planted in the long and much-studied history of urban spaces, and he draws from it a pragmatic optimism that keeps his argument both hopeful and nuanced. His real thesis: Under cyberspace's influence, the city is changing, no more or less radically than it did under the influence of postal systems, electricity, and cars. And if we ride the new changes carefully, he insists, the places we live and work in can become "e-topias--lean, green cities that work smarter, not harder."

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

From Publishers Weekly
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 bitsAor perhaps they're bytesAof 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.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 edition (September 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262133555
• ISBN-13: 978-0262133555
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,468,987 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars E-topia has vision but lacks depth, October 30, 1999

By	"lyk0s" (Precipice) - See all my reviews

All in all, Mitchell's vision of urban life in the industrialized nations is compelling. He weaves a convincing mosaic of The City of "real soon now", where the design elements of architecture are extended to include the additions of Bandwidth, telepresence, conduit and storage. Indeed, as a network engineer myself, I believe he pretty much has it spot on, for those of us who are fortunate to live in the Northern Hemisphere. But what of the rest of the planet who won't have OC-48 cables running down their main streets? (80% of humanity have never come in contact with a computer, let alone a network infrastructure). He paints a picture of a glorious brave new cyberworld for the top 5%, but ignores the implications of this technology on the other 95% of the people on this rock we call earth. Still, if you are one of the fortunate ones (or wish you were) to be able to take part in this vision, the book is well worth reading. Earth: E-topia or Borg Planet, YOU decide!

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Coherent & Balanced Future Vision of Wired Cities & Life, July 17, 2000

By	Prof David T Wright (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews

E-topia presents a top-level, grounded look at a distant future through the impact of Internet technology specifically related to rich-nations urban spaces, architecture, work and leisure.

The concise, intelligently written, well-referenced chapters span:

* march of the meganets- digiphiles versus digiphobes, after the digital revolution, information infrastructure & opportunity, new networks and urban transformation, the big pipes, connected to the backbone, new global interdependence, from POP to your door, the network city extended, the end of rural isolation, residual wireless backblocks, public and private, behind the firewalls and filters, and the task ahead.

* telematics takes command- proscenium and display, screenspace, out of the box, center and periphery, up in the lights, virtual reality, and augmented reality.

* software- new genius of the place- embedded intelligence, instant networking, and form fetches function.

* computers for living in- wear ware, body nets, appliance intelligence, electronic teamwork, buildings with nervous systems, intelligent resource consumption, adaptive behaviour, reconceiving construction, the I-bahn, and smart cities.

* homes and neighbourhoods- displacement of space, reconfigured homes, rethinking planning/zoning, sociology of wired dwellings, localisation, renucleation, twenty-four hour electronic neighbourhoods, redistributed secondary relationships, and dual cities.

* getting together- online meeting places, shift in scale, invisible boundaries, virtuality, connectivity and sociability, electronic co-ordination, cyberturf, e-vox populi, civitas and urbs decoupled, and reinventing public space.

* reworking the workplace- exchanging intangible products, delivering information products, remaking making, value from knowledge, relocating production, make after buying, the recombinant workplace, and mobilising enterprises.

* the teleserviced city- typology of service systems, summoning assistance, keeping tabs, surveillance and seclusion, delivery at a distance, web of indirect relationships, telerobotics, the teleservice paradox, electronic fronts & architectural backs, and serving space.

* the economy of presence- the cost of being there, traditional limits, asynchronous alternative, information mobilization, remote interaction, modes and operations, costs and benefits, and power of place.

* lean and green- dematerialisation, demobilisation, mass customisation, intelligent operation, and self transformation.

Initially this reviewer was put-off by the sometimes obscure vocabulary, and relative-complexity of grammar (compared with a recent reading-list of simplistic e-business texts). By the end of the book, the synergy of contributions & style proved a key strength. Other strengths include: the coherence, attractiveness and power of future scenarios presented; and related discussion about the rich-poor gap within neighbourhoods and the World.

Improvements could include: better use of illustrations or tables in place of existing lengthier textual descriptions; deeper material in areas beyond the MIT professor-author's expertise of architecture & computer science (e.g. world class manufacturing, supply chain management, teleworking, appropriate technology, and development economics); and greater evidence of significant research & results beyond MIT.

Overall very highly recommended- 'E-topia' is a must-read for business-technologists seeking a bigger context, as well as "blue-sky futurists" seeking a balanced pragmatic view of possibilities.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great text, September 24, 2000

By	Ron Mader "Planeta.com Founder" (Mexico) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: e-topia (Paperback)

- (From Planeta Journal) 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.