City of Bits : One of the most thought-provoking books I read in 2018

Thought-provoking!

While reading books, as with most other things in life, you occasionally stumble upon a piece of gold just lying around and you decide to take a look. There are few books which are timed well. When I was reading this book, it felt like this book was published recently. But then, this book was published in 1995. The author of book, William J. Mitchell, on the surface tries to re-imagine the urban space as the world gets upended by digital technology. He explains how physical space is now complemented by cyberspace. He tries to correlate, superimpose or substitute cyberspace with physical space. As you read the book, you realise his prescience about today’s reality. A reality where digital connectivity is re-weaving fabric of our existence. There are a couple of brilliant insights to get from the book. I would highly recommend reading this book.

Some chief insights :

Book Cover

1. Ever since homo-sapiens became settlers (first agricultural, then industrial) and started building their villages, towns and cities. The architecture and design of these settlements had important consequences on how dwellers led their lives. There were plazas and markets, arcades and stadiums, banks and financial centres, shopping centres and office spaces. Each place was clearly defined by function and purpose it served. The urban design also reinforced the power structures of the world, as important people met each other in exclusive clubs and real-estate where common people had no access. This is where all the important information circulated and access to these places meant access to opportunities and prosperity. Where you lived and were born determined your position in the world. All the patterns and rhythms of a city were defined by need to put people at a fixed place at a fixed time for fixed purposes. Well, internet changed a lot of that, since it is decentralised and accessible to everyone with connectivity.
2. The book explains how internet and other technologies have removed the spatial-temporal constraints from our lives. We no longer have to be physically present at a place at some pre-specified time to do something. And that fundamentally changes the way we do things, e.g. education, healthcare, selling goods and services. In pre-digital world, people had to assemble together at a physical location at same time, to make the transaction possible. But, with digital connectivity, you can basically have access at any time at any place. You don’t have to go to a hospital or a university situated at some place. That’s a pretty big deal, because that fundamentally change how we organise our lives, or how we build our institutions, or how we run humanity.
3. A lot of discussions presented in the book have to do with digital information, but you can very well add the AI to extrapolate the possibilities, and there are a lot of them. The information+data architecture can potentially redistribute access to services and opportunities across humanity. Suddenly, a kid living in a rural village can have same access to education and healthcare as a kid in a city.
4. William also discusses the ramification of inhabiting cyberspace and definitions of identity, belongingness, security, privacy, surveillance, credibility, habitat and community are redefined or cease to exist altogether.
5. The boundaries of cyberspace transcends national, religious and geographical boundaries. There would be a lot of splashing around and mixing of ideas and shared realities of people who have lived in isolation as they increasingly integrate into a global community. The rules of this emerging game have to be re-written. There would be probably new constitutions, new rules and laws, new public policies and new institutions to regulate this new sphere of existence.
6. He focusses on online-trolling (called flaming, back in the days), on boundary between real and virtual, and on political economy of cyberspace where we choose to spend more and more of our time.
7. The book was written by a MIT professor at a time when internet was just starting to go global, and the frontiers were still limited to nerds and geeks. But, now that internet is all-encompassing and all-pervasive, reading this book is akin to reading user-manual of cyberspace.
8. Information architecture of a nation will become similar to their transport and communication architecture as they race to a new global order. As India is witnessing unprecedented access to internet, there is a potential for unprecedented nation-building.

A thought-experiment on political economy of cyberspace while reading the book :
When we organise physical world, we build states and nations. Then, someone gets to rule the state. The government lays down all the rules and laws to govern the physical space and then enacts institutions to enforce the law of the land. The government can be dictatorial, or democratically elected. Now imagine something like Facebook or Google, which is some sort of a cyberspace, where we spend more and more time, and let the timelines and search results increasingly shape our worldview. Now, in case of cyberspace, the rules and laws, which decide what is right and wrong, what gets displayed in your news feed or search results, are written by some engineers. Now, let’s try to bring this back to physical world. Your life is basically controlled by a corporation which dictates what version of world is visible to you. And guess what, you don’t even get to elect or choose anything about this corporation. And your time in cyberspace is being sold to advertisers as you dodge the ads scattered around the web pages, and your browsing history is further maintained and sold as a package for better ad-targeting. Surprise!

In conclusion:
You might read a paragraph of this book, in some editorial section, or an online blog, when a savvy journalist explaining how Googles or Amazons or Paypals of today’s world. The brilliance of this book though lies in prescience of its author. It’s like taking a big step-back, going back to mid-90s, and sitting with the author to discuss future. And the future that we now inhabit is eerily similar to the one reflected in the book. So, further extrapolations are going to come true in coming decades, 2020s, 2030s..