Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City

This book is enlightening for urban studies in the future. Clearly as it suggested the urbanist shall be (able to be) more sensitive to non physical spaces as well as 'conventional' spatial interventions. However it is also quesionable in what way we can catch up with the fast, unpredictable development of internet (along with other h-tech industries which has already gone far beyond our imigination), a review on the developed network is self-evidently far from enough. In reality internet users,at the same moment,urban space users learn cyber-space by clicking, browsing, online-purchasing rather than reading, apparently it is more effective and empirically more understandable. This fact makes theories about cyber-society more or less, inevitbly obsolete and seemingly less neccessary. After all the book is intelligent especially when it explicitly, or implicitly indicates the interaction (possible interations) between urban space and cyber-space.

To someone bewildered by the continuing pace of technological changes, Mitchell offers calming and exciting insights as to where we might all be going. You might well call him a futurist, along the lines of Alvin Toffler and Herman Kahn. Certainly, he writes gracefully, and does not drown you in technobabble. He describes the rise of a pervasive mobile networking environment around each of us. Encapsulated for the most part in the already ubiquitous cell phone. It is already been noticed by others that cell phone styling is of importance to some users. It bespeaks a fashion sense about themselves that they wish to proclaim to the world. Mitchell suggests that such attitudes will grow, as some manifestations of technology become ever smaller and more closely associated with their users. A humanising, and not a de-humanising trend.