Kazys Varnelis is the director of the Network Architecture Lab, at Columbia University in New York. Within this experimental department of the university's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Varnelis investigates the impact of computation and communications on architecture and urbanism. Together with Robert Sumrell, he runs the non-profit architectural collective AUDC; their first book, "Blue Monday", was published in 2007. In 2005/06 Varnelis was a visiting scholar with the "Networked Publics" program at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication. This fall, MIT Press will publish the results of this program as "Networked Publics", edited by Varnelis. His essay for receiver looks at how mediated communication has changed our notion of place, created non-places and now has us darting between simultaneous environments.
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Network culture is as new to us today as modernity was to the people who lived a century ago. To prognosticate more than I already have, is highly dangerous. But it is also necessary. If we can, as yet, do little to project the vast changes in society that will take place in the coming years, we need to watch warily, acting as techno-skeptics one day, techno-enthusiasts the other, so as to ensure a world of greater meaning, democracy, and real social meaning and individuality.
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