Shall we allow home-based employment, education, entertainment, and other opportunities and services to be channeled to some households and not to others, thereby technologically creating and maintaining a new kind of privilege? Or can we use the infobahn as an equalization mechanism – a device for providing enhanced access to these benefits for the geographically isolated, the homebound elderly, the sick and disabled, and those who cannot afford wheels? … Going out, going to work, going to school or to church, going away to college, and going home are economically significant, socially and legally defining, symbolically freighted acts. To change or eliminate them, as electrocottages and cybercondos promise to do, is to alter the basic fabric of our lives.
Predictor: Mitchell, William J.
Prediction, in context:In his 1994 book “City of Bits,” MIT computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes: ”We can formulate ,,, issues in social-equity terms. Shall we allow home-based employment, education, entertainment, and other opportunities and services to be channeled to some households and not to others, thereby technologically creating and maintaining a new kind of privilege? Or can we use the infobahn as an equalization mechanism – a device for providing enhanced access to these benefits for the geographically isolated, the homebound elderly, the sick and disabled, and those who cannot afford wheels? We can also formulate them as questions about architecture’s fundamental representational role. If we can no longer make the traditional urban distinction between, on the one hand, major public and commercial buildings that represent institutions, and, on the other hand, relatively uniform and repetitive housing areas, how shall we make social organization and power legible? Going out, going to work, going to school or to church, going away to college, and going home are economically significant, socially and legally defining, symbolically freighted acts. To change or eliminate them, as electrocottages and cybercondos promise to do, is to alter the basic fabric of our lives.”
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