The mobility of capital has been heightened. A world economy can now function in real time. Firms can maintain unity of management while decentralizing production and participating in markets worldwide. At the same time, there are some vigorous centralizing forces. Production processes remain ultimately dependent on appropriation and transformation of matter, so industrial locations are still largely determined by local availability of raw materials and access to labor markets. Furthermore, the initial development of an advanced telecommunications infrastructure is likely to favor existing urban centers … over small towns and remote areas. In the end, these opposing forces will have complex and socially differentiated effects on urban and regional development processes and on industrial, commercial, and residential locational patterns. There is no simple formula.
Predictor: Mitchell, William J.
Prediction, in context:In his 1994 book “City of Bits,” MIT computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes: ”There are growing forces acting to decentralize economic activity. Managers and professionals are increasingly able to scatter across the globe while reintegrating their activities through telecommunications. The mobility of capital has been heightened. A world economy can now function in real time. Firms can maintain unity of management while decentralizing production and participating in markets worldwide. At the same time, there are some vigorous centralizing forces. Production processes remain ultimately dependent on appropriation and transformation of matter, so industrial locations are still largely determined by local availability of raw materials and access to labor markets. Furthermore, the initial development of an advanced telecommunications infrastructure is likely to favor existing urban centers (with their high and profitable concentrations of information work) over small towns and remote areas. In the end, these opposing forces will have complex and socially differentiated effects on urban and regional development processes and on industrial, commercial, and residential locational patterns. There is no simple formula. So cyberspace communities – like 18th-century seaports, 19th-century railroad towns, and mid-20th-century motel/fast-food strips – play specialized roles within the complex new economic order that develops as a new kind of infrastructure is deployed. They are stops on the Infobahn. The world’s apparently insatiable greed for bits will fuel their growth, as demand for manufactured goods drove development of earlier industrial cities and transportation centers. They will flourish as places to make bucks from bits by producing them, owning them, moving them, brokering them, gambling with them, skimming them, stealing them, and inventing new ways to add value to them.”
Biography:William J. Mitchell was a professor and dean of architecture at MIT and the author of the predictive book “City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn” (1994). He also taught at Harvard, Yale, Carnegie-Mellon and Cambridge Universities. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: City of Bits
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 6: Bit Biz
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-books/City_of_Bits/index.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney