MIT Author: William J. Mitchell
Exploring The Ethics of Interconnectivity
The blackout of August 14, 2003, offered a potent reminder of our dependence on fragile electrical networks. For William J. Mitchell, author of City of Bits and e-topia, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT, and incoming head of MIT's Media Lab, it was also a reminder of the urgent need for what he calls "ethical interconnectivity."
Mitchell's forthcoming book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (MIT Press, 2003) considers large-scale networking and its implications for cities.
Mitchell discusses how cascading power outages, computer viruses, SARS epidemics, terrorist infiltration of transportation networks, and cellphone conversations in the streets are all symptoms of a dramatic new urban condition-that of ubiquitous, inescapable network interconnectivity. This brings enormous benefits, but also creates new vulnerabilities and policy dilemmas. Me++ provides the first systematic, critical analysis of this condition, and argues that we must respond to it by developing and applying principles of ethical interconnectivity.
On the new logic of urban resilience, Mitchell writes:
"When cities from Troy to Palma Nova defend their encircling walls, New York and other twenty-first century cities must defend their distributed networks against accident and attack. They must protect physical network infrastructure against destruction not only locally but also to far-flung extremities. They must ensure there is sufficient redundancy in vital networks to prevent their being vulnerable to failure through destruction of a few key nodes or links. They must introduce circuit breakers, relief valves, and similar protections against failure propagation. They must find effective ways to guard against introduction of explosives, toxins, bioagents, portable code, and other destructive agents, and to guard against hijacking of vehicles, servers and similar delivery devices. And cities must contend with both threats of physical destruction and threats to the logical integrity of networks from viruses, worms, software attack tools, and the like.
"Conversely, in cities can keep their networks operating in times of disaster, they can quickly mobilize regenerative resources. Transportation networks can bring in relief supplies from distant parts of the globe. Mobile wireless nodes can swiftly restore telecommunications. And, increasingly, high-speed digital linkages to distant backup sites and geographically distributed enterprises can keep economic activity cranking along.
"Traditionally, there was safety in numbers and in surrounding walls. Now urban security and resilience are grounded in patterns of connectivity. And defensive rings have fragmented and recombined. They no longer surround entire settlements and separate them from the countryside; rather, they enclose countless, scattered network access points-from airport departure gates to password-protected personal computers."
Purchase Me++ and learn more about William Mitchell on the MIT Press Web site.
Published 2003
