ABSTRACT
It often seems the contemporary imagination is haunted by fears of technology. The rise of mobile technologies, the way we work online, new forms of data logging, satellite navigation, cybernetics and wearables all suggest that the boundary between people and technology is dissolving (Schilling 2005). Likewise, the idea that new technologies are driving cities towards a post-human (and possibly apocalyptic) landscape of surveillance and discipline is a popular trope in city writing – one that finds sharp expression in the contemporary noir urbanism of Mike Davis (1990) or Paul Virilio’s (2005) account of the City of Panic. Yet it is important to note that the significance of new technologies may be no more profound than those which preceded them. A brief trawl through the histories of new technologies – printing, steam power, gas lighting, electrification, the motor car, the telephone, television, computers – confirms that all innovations are greeted with some level of moral approbation and talk about the erosion of society. Furthermore,
each had impacts on the shape and form of cities that were, in their time, every bit as profound as is the perceived impact of cybertechnologies today.
