Cyber Cities

Noted Urban Historian M. Christine Boyer Turns To The New Frontier - Cybercities - In This Important And Compelling New Book. Boyer Argues That The Computer Is To Contemporary Society What The Machine Was To Modernism, And That This New Metaphor Profoundly Affects The Way We Think, Imagine, And Ultimately Grasp Reality. But There Is, She Believes, An Inherent Danger Here: That As Cyberspace Pulls Us Into Its Electronic Grasp, We Withdraw From The World. Transferred, Plugged In, And Down-loaded, Reality Becomes Increasingly Immaterial. Frozen To One Side Of Our Terminal's Screen, Boyer Concludes, We Risk Becoming Incapable Of Action In A Real City Plagued By Crime, Hatred, Disease, Unemployment, And Under-education. The Imaginary Real World Of Cybercities -- Labyrinths Of The Mind And The City -- Real And Virtual -- Disenchantment Of The City: An Improbable Dialogue Between Bodies, Machines, And Urban Form -- Imaging The City In The Age Of Electronic Communication -- Electronic Disruptions And Black Holes Of The City: The Issues Of Gender And Urbanism In The Age Of Electronic Communication. M. Christine Boyer. Includes Bibliographical References. Header......Page 0 Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 4 Introduction......Page 6 The Imaginary Real World of CyberCities......Page 14 Labyrinths of the Mind and the City - Real and Virtual......Page 46 Disenchantment of the City: An Improbable Dialogue Between Bodies, Machines, and Urban Form......Page 74 Imaging the City in the Age of Electronic Communication......Page 138 Electronic Disruptions and Black Holes in the City: The Issues of Gender and Urbanism in the Age of Electronic Communication......Page 184 Conclusion......Page 242 Illustrations......Page 248 From the moment William Gibson announced in his dystopian science-fiction account Neuromancer (1984) that the new informational network or computer matrix called cyberspace looks like Los Angeles seen from five thousand feet up in the air, there has been a predilection for drawing a parallel between the virtual space of computer networks and post-urban places of disorder and decay.