The article delves into the intersection of technology, urban design, and postmodernism within the context of virtual cities. It showed us that contemporary culture is saturated with manipulated signs and imagery, challenging traditional notions of artifice and reality, which are often deconstructed rather than duplicated. It also revealed the transformation from the Machine City of modernism to the Informational City of postmodernism within the context of CyberCities. This transformation displaces traditional Western spatial and temporal principles associated with the Machine City, such as roads, buildings, and machines, into the spreadsheets, matrices, and networks of the Informational City. The Informational City is described as a metaspace/hyperspace that operates above the level of reality, where reality is deferred from the screen to memory banks, video disks, and imaginary networks. Overall, the transformation signifies a profound mutation entailing a departure from the materiality and physicality of the Machine City towards a more abstract and information-centric urban paradigm.
In addition, the article talked about the fear of centering devices in modern society, and the shift towards decentered, invisible cities. The concept of CyberCities is presented as a complex assemblage where individual, collective, and data sets interact in a multivalent way, in which computers are able to make urban planning strategies, drawing parallels to military decision-making models.
In conclusion, the article fully explored the relationship between the contemporary urban environment and the digital landscapes from our imaginations in a thought provoking way.
—— Zhang Suo 3036100533
M. Christine Boyer. The Imaginary Real World ofCyberCities. The MIT Press (2019).