Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Book Review: Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (03 Sep 2004) Building brilliantly upon Donna J. Haraway's assertion that anyone who lives in a human society exists in a cyborg relationship with it, William J. Mitchell's welcome volume examines the new shape this cyborg self takes on in a world redefined by wireless networked digital technologies. Mitchell, a justly famous proponent of new technologies of communication, shares a good deal with the Victorian sages - Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold - and the Old Testament prophets who served as their inspiration. Like these self-proclaimed prophets, Mitchell surveys the contemporary scene and then offers contrasting visions of the future - the first of which offers a joyful, positive view, the second a grim warning of disaster. And like his predecessors, he derives his forceful prophecies from relating contemporary society to fundamental laws; they point out both what terrible things happen when one strays from the laws of God or nature and the visionary possibilities that result when one remains true to them. Mitchell, in contrast, situates his diagnoses and predictions within the laws of information technology. Unlike these secular and religious sages, he doesn't begin with a threat and then offer a hopeful vision afterwards. Mitchell, always a techno-enthusiast, begins with visions of the best possible future, the one with benefits for all, and only later shows strikingly darker possibilities. He repeats this pattern of alternating between the positive and negative effects of information technology, a pattern that marks quite a departure from the earlier City of Bits. Article URL: http://tekka.net/06/?Me Read 60 more articles from Tekka sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Book Review: More than a game, the computer games as fictional form     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy