There is a new form of human settlement - from the nomadic, to the agrarian to the urban/suburban dichotomy and the metropolis, we now have the mediapolis.

The difference in this form of urbanity is that unlike previous formations which were rooted in physical spatialities and densities, this new form is ephemeral, defined by virtuality and multimediality which interact to give us connectivity across spatial borders. Exploiting this connectivity gives us interactivity.

What is unique about this is that it doesn't require a tabula rasa of the physical realm to imagine - it can already be grafted onto our existing infrastructures and realities.

pts for further research: sasika sassen, howard rheingold, christine boyer.

remember to avoid blanket rhetoric and confusion of metaphors, as have been employed by william mitchell and marcos novak (the fallacy of the diagram, anyone?) possibly interesting however, is jean baudrillard's idea of simulcra. authentity as the physical stuff of stuff is nowmoot - as walter benjamin writes in The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. Echos of this can be read in Deyan Sudjic's The Language of Things.

One concrete example of this new form of "nodal urbanity" is in Global Cities. Cities such as tokyo, london and new york form the most important hubs in the current worldwide information economy. their financial districts thus assume their own strategic positions because they have been detached from their direct environments. What would a map of all these virtually connected centers look like if conceived as one physical aggoloration. This is only meant as a study tho.

Another point of reference could be Superstudio and Archigram.