Mitchell and "Unassigned Space"

Cyborg city

William J Mitchell

James Harkin interview

Saturday November 26, 2005, Guardian

Good stuff in the Guardian today William Mitchell, the author of "City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn" (1996) and "Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City"(2004). Whilst much of the inteview is a fairly predictable look at the impact of wireless networks, I do like his notion of the importance of 'unassigned space'. Particularlly relevant for us in the sociology department at MMU as we are looking for new ways of using our buildings to go beyond the simple notions of lectures and seminars, to make more use of 'in -between spaces' - pc drop in centres, the libararies (where a ban on talking has recently been lifted), coffee bars etc

"...Mitchell tells me ...how the new wireless technologies are making much office space in cities redundant. If you go into corporate offices today, he says, the private offices are closed and dark; the workers are out in hotel rooms or on the move. The wireless laptop culture, he says, is increasing the value of sit-down space just like this.

"Unassigned space, what used to be thought of as non-productive space, is actually where all the real action happens." Like this coffee bar, he suggests, above the sound of Frank Sinatra and the whirring of coffee machines.

Mitchell's theory is that the city has always been moulding us into technology-dependent cyborgs, but that the new communications technologies have made all this more vivid by overlaying on the urban landscape a kind of central nervous system that plugs us deep into the wireless ether. Mobile phones, for example, have become so intimately a part of ourselves that they are a kind of umbilical cord, anchoring us into the information society's digital infrastructure. A whole ragbag of new gadgets and wireless technologies hold up the promise of navigating our way through cities in exciting new ways. "


full interview at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5342429-103677,00.html