Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media

Mattern, Shannon

ISBN 10: 1517902436 / ISBN 13: 9781517902438

Published by Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2017

About this Item

Acceptable - This is a significantly damaged book. It should be considered a reading copy only. Please order this book only if you are interested in the content and not the condition. May be ex-library. Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M1517902436Z4

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1517902436
• ISBN 13: 9781517902438
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

For years, pundits have trumpeted the earthshattering changes that big data and smart networks will soon bring to our cities. But what if cities have long been built for intelligence, maybe for millennia? In Code and Clay, Data and Dirt Shannon Mattern advances the provocative argument that our urban spaces have been “smart” and mediated for thousands of years.

Offering powerful new ways of thinking about our cities, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt goes far beyond the standard historical concepts of origins, development, revolutions, and the accomplishments of an elite few. Mattern shows that in their architecture, laws, street layouts, and civic knowledge—and through technologies including the telephone, telegraph, radio, printing, writing, and even the human voice—cities have long negotiated a rich exchange between analog and digital, code and clay, data and dirt, ether and ore. 

Mattern’s vivid prose takes readers through a historically and geographically broad range of stories, scenes, and locations, synthesizing a new narrative for our urban spaces. Taking media archaeology to the city’s streets, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt reveals new ways to write our urban, media, and cultural histories.

About the Author

Shannon Mattern is associate professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School in New York. She is author of The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities and Deep Mapping the Media City, both from Minnesota.