Urban Future (Volume I) by Nick Land ISBN 9780646710211, 0646710214 instant download

Urban Future (Volume I) by Nick Land ISBN 9780646710211, 0646710214 instant download

THE ESSAYS in this volume come from Nick Land’s now-defunct blog Urban Future (thatsmags.com/shanghai) that he wrote from 2011 to 2013. For the sake of coherency, essays deemed incongruent with the following description of the blog—from Land’s introductory post—were excluded:

"Most basically and predictably, Urban Future has been programmed by its name. Its principal topic is the intersection of cities with the future. It aims to foster discussion about cities as engines of the future, and about futurism as a dynamic influence on the shape, character, and development of cities. More particularly, it scavenges for clues, and floats speculations, about the Shanghai of tomorrow."

This is the essence of Urban Future. With a focus on Shanghai, China, and the West, it is a philosophical book about urban modernity, urban evolution, and technological progress and acceleration. Land sees cities not merely as concentrations of people but as quasi-superorganisms—increasingly resembling advanced computational systems—that are driving mankind toward its evolutionary destiny.