Originally published—in print and entirely online—in 1995, William J. Mitchell’s City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn resembles a relic of early cyberculture scholarship, going back and forth between visionary insight and embarrassing naiveté. As one of the earliest attempts to reimagine and reconceptualize architecture and urbanism in an age of digital information, City of Bits provides a thought-provoking and generous glimpse into the cities—and citizens—of tomorrow. At the same time, the vision, emanating from what may be the most privileged vantage point for the new millennium, MIT substitutes celebratory breadth for critical depth, and along the way all but ignores crucial social and economic considerations. For Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT, four contemporary developments make necessary a reconceptualization of architecture and urban space: the digital telecommunications revolution; nanotechnology, or the miniaturization of electronics; the commodification of digital information; and the recent domination of software over materialized forms. In addition to the ideas put forth in his brief introduction and conclusion, Mitchell tackles the convergence between these developments, architecture, and urban space in five chapters: “Electronic Agoras”; “Cyborg Citizens”; “Recombinant Architecture”; “Soft Cities”; and...