Cybercities

Summary: In these polemical essays, urban historian M. Christine Boyer argues that the computer is to contemporary society what the machine was to modernism, and that this metaphor profoundly affects the way we ultimately grasp reality. But there is, she believes, an inherent danger here: as cyberspace pulls us into its electronic grasp, we withdraw from the world and risk becoming incapable of action in a real city plagued b...y crime, hatred, disease, unemployment, and under-education. Boyer examines cyberspace, virtual reality, disembodiment, and cyborgs, drawing on a wide range of sources from Walter Benjamin to William Gibson. In the end, she issues a clarion call to reinstate a social agenda in the midst of these technological innovations."CyberCities is a provocative new book of essays in which Boyer stands against the outpouring of enthusiasm over our predigested, reconfigured, digital world". -- Public Art Review [read more]