Cyborg city: A Bus Tour Through Wireless London

beatriz

Cyborg city

William J Mitchell, advocate of the wireless world

James Harkin
Saturday November 26, 2005
The Guardian

William J Mitchell does not look much like a cyborg. When I meet him in London, in the bookshop of the imposing Royal Institute of British Architects building in Portland Place, he seems every inch the retiring, self-effacing middle-aged family man, taking time out of his morning to buy some books for his sons. But as soon as we walk outside he makes a slightly eccentric observation. Across the road is the Chinese embassy and atop the building, Mitchell points out, sits a vast nest of telecommunications aerials and equipment. The thicket of wires and steel is imposing and a little sinister when you see it, but it is also strangely invisible.

Mitchell is the world's leading guru of how city life has changed in the age of wireless communication, and author of the rather cultish book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. He hails from Sydney, Australia, but is now a professor at MIT's super-futuristic Media Lab in Massachusetts, where the technologies of the near future are given a test-run by some of the brightest minds in academe. Granted a couple of hours of his time, I ask him to take me on a tour of the digital, wirelessly connected world that is still being built all around us - in a city that he doesn't really know.
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A Bus Tour Through Wireless London: http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/2005/12/a_bus_tour_thro.html#more