Cities are routers in network society - by Gordon Brander

It is a principal aspect of the electric age that it establishes a global network that has much of the character of our central nervous system. (McLuhan, 1964. Understanding Media) The medium is the message, McLuhan says. Culture conforms to the shape of communication. Our medium is the internet, a network that instantaneously propagates electrical impulses around the globe. What does it mean to share this global nervous system? Our specialist and fragmented civilization of center-margin structure is suddenly experiencing an instantaneous reassembling of all its mechanized bits into an organic whole. This is the new world of the global village. (McLuhan, 1964) Like our biological nervous system, the internet creates a kind of holistic field of awareness, at odds with the logic of industrial society, a logic of narrow specialization and hierarchy. Instead, we find ourselves in a condition closer to our state of nature, a new kind of oral culture, where power flows like gossip over the n

It is a principal aspect of the electric age that it establishes a global network that has much of the character of our central nervous system. (McLuhan, 1964. Understanding Media) The medium is the message, McLuhan says. Culture conforms to the shape of communication. Our medium is the internet, a network that instantaneously propagates electrical impulses around the globe. What does it mean to share this global nervous system? Our specialist and fragmented civilization of center-margin structure is suddenly experiencing an instantaneous reassembling of all its mechanized bits into an organic