The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

E-topia: Information and
Communication Technologies and
the Transformation of Urban Life
William J. Mitchell
What kinds of buildings are required by the network economy and
the knowledge society? How should these be distributed spatially
within a city? These are the questions that I shall explore in this chapter—first
generally, then with specific reference to the context of
Portugal.
The technological context
Chapter 14
To begin with, we should note that the technological context of the
network society is established not just by microprocessors and the
Internet, but by an emerging wave of diverse new technologies that
find their uses relative to one another. The 2005 Lemelson-MIT list
of the top twenty-five technological innovations of the last twenty-five
years provides a good sense of this. These innovations proved to be
important not just because they provided new capabilities, but because
these capabilities met real human needs in a technological context
established by earlier innovations and in an evolving social context.
The list runs:
1. The Internet
2. The cellphone
3. Personal computers
4. Fiber optics
5. Email
6. Commercialized GPS
7. Portable computers
8. Memory storage discs
9. Consumer level digital cameras