PUBLICATIONS
October 2000 Issue
The Geographical Review
October 2000, Vol. 90 (4), pp. 636-645
TRACKING THE CYBERSPACE ELEPHANT
SUSAN M. POMEROY
CITY OF BITS: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. By William J. Mitchell. 225 pp.;
maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog., index. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, $15.95
(paper), ISBN 0262631768.
e-topia: "Urban Life, Jim-But Not as We Know It." By William J. Mitchell. 192
pp.; notes, index. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, $22.50 (cloth), ISBN
0262133555; $13.95 (paper), ISBN 0262632055
ABSTRACT:
Cyberspace has been variously viewed as a technological artifact, a linguistic feat, a
graphical fun house, a commercial gold mine, a boys' club, a girls' club, an architectural
edifice, a frontier, a highway, a space of flows through which capital and information
are shunted in ever-greater quantities, at ever faster speeds. Cyberspace has
been said to offer a parallel world, an analog world, a new world, a virgin territory.
In short, it is supposed to be many things to many people. Through the varied
mythologies of cyberspace are to be found new lands for geographers, a fresh start
for architects and planners, an alternative medium for cultural critics, a new site of
resistance and repression, a spacious arena for play and transgression. At this historical
moment it is tempting, however, to suspect that scholars who look at cyberspace
are most like the blind men and the elephant.
CITY OF BITS: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. By William J. Mitchell. 225 pp.;
maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog., index. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, $15.95
(paper), ISBN 0262631768.
e-topia: "Urban Life, Jim-But Not as We Know It." By William J. Mitchell. 192
pp.; notes, index. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, $22.50 (cloth), ISBN
0262133555; $13.95 (paper), ISBN 0262632055
ABSTRACT:
Cyberspace has been variously viewed as a technological artifact, a linguistic feat, a graphical fun house, a commercial gold mine, a boys' club, a girls' club, an architectural edifice, a frontier, a highway, a space of flows through which capital and information are shunted in ever-greater quantities, at ever faster speeds. Cyberspace has been said to offer a parallel world, an analog world, a new world, a virgin territory. In short, it is supposed to be many things to many people. Through the varied mythologies of cyberspace are to be found new lands for geographers, a fresh start for architects and planners, an alternative medium for cultural critics, a new site of resistance and repression, a spacious arena for play and transgression. At this historical moment it is tempting, however, to suspect that scholars who look at cyberspace are most like the blind men and the elephant.