Instabilities and ambiguities in space use … challenge traditional ways of representing social distinctions and stages of socialization … Categories lose their clarity, and rites of passage require redefinition, when the uses of built space are no longer permanently assigned and depend from minute to minute on software and the fleeting flow of bits.
Predictor: Mitchell, William J.
Prediction, in context:In his 1994 book “City of Bits,” MIT computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes: ”Instabilities and ambiguities in space use … challenge traditional ways of representing social distinctions and stages of socialization. In many societies there are well-defined, separate places in the dwelling for men, women, and children and for family members and for guests; different information circulates in these different spatial settings. Young children may be isolated and protected in nurseries and playgrounds, and there may be architecturally differentiated places for adolescents, adult breadwinners, and retirees. At an urban scale, prisons, convents, residential colleges, orphanages, hospices, halfway houses, official residences for political and religious leaders, and low-income housing projects make vivid social distinctions by creating readily identifiable, physically discrete domains. But categories lose their clarity, and rites of passage require redefinition, when the uses of built space are no longer permanently assigned and depend from minute to minute on software and the fleeting flow of bits.”
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: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: City of Bits
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 4: Recombinant Architecture
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