City of Bits
Short Note: Narratives of Bits and the Early City
Mumford (1961) and others have noted that writing and urbanization were more or less simultaneous historical developments. The function of city as a container and catalyst for human information-based activity have lead many authors, contrary to actual developments over the last century, to conclude that information technologies would lead to an obsolescence of urban form.
Others recognize the city as the original and greatest information technology and that the growth of contemporary information tools is inextricably linked to the urbane. This claim, provides space for interesting experiments concerning the analysis of the many texts that point to the large changes in society brought about by technologies.Re-imagining contemporary bestsellers such as the Long Tail and Democratizing Innovation as historical texts could help to place changes brought about in relation with the growth of the Internet as part of a broader timeline.
