Obviously there is a lot of overlap between the areas I define / questions I pose below. The answers to each question inform the answers to the others. I feel like I’m writing an index without writing a book, but here goes:

1. How does history inform the relationship between telecommunications and urbanism?

   Overview of the city in history and, in the most general sense of the word, technologies— everything from systems of notation and commercial protocols to transportation and sanitation (broadly, infrastructure)— that effect their development, the interrelationships of the people within them to all of the above, to each other, and to flows of biomass and capital.

   At the risk of sounding like I’m endorsing some sort of teleological argument for explaining structures which might develop over time from simple rules and/or be the result of a confluence of factors (intelligent design), I’m going to refer to the “design” of cities from here on. I need a better word here, of course, one that doesn’t limit discussion to deliberately ordered components yet still gives the reader a sense of the components functioning as a sort of gestalt. The word structure feels like it lacks a sense of self-organization and the acknowledgement of the interface of the subject’s subcomponents.

   “Design” of cities as it relates to these factors: military functions (development of different types of fortifications as a response to new weapons), commercial routes, trade, communication technologies (messengers, semaphore towers, telephone, telegraph). This shouldn’t come at the expense of neglecting obvious factors: access to national resources, proximity to bodies of water, etc.

   History of wayfinding / remote-sensing / measurement technologies and their effects on human migration, patterns of dispersal (ex: epic poems as location referencing mnemonics, Erasthanes, sextant, compass, cartography, Montgolfier Bros / kites on cameras, development of increasingly accurate systems of measurement, standardization of those measurements, etc); resultant transfer of genes, memes, germs, wealth.

   This will necessitate some research into the historical practice of urban planning.

2. What models and theories from the physical sciences inform thinking about the role of digital media (both traditional telecommunications and geospatial technologies) in contemporary urban problems?

   For example, are there significant relationships between frequently occurring patterns of the spatialization of people and objects in cities and frequently occurring structures in the natural world which better inform Design than the modernist ideal of a universal subject?

   Overview of theories and models of organization that can be applied to thinking about cities (and everything else?) including complex adaptive systems behavior / emergent behavior / self-organization / stigmergy / network theory / power laws / swarming / pandemonium / game theory / graph theory/ neo darwinism.

3. What can cultural theory tell us about the relationship between telecommunications and urban life?

   Overview of theories of everyday life, the production of space, alienation, spectacle, status and cultural/symbolic capital as it relates to kinship groups, wayfinding, representations of space.

4. Wait! You never defined “contemporary urban problems,” but you said it a few times. WTH is that supposed to mean?

   Yes, that definitely needs to be more specific. Hopefully I will move on to looking a much more specific issue or set of issues and the problem will correct itself, but here are some things I have in mind: Sprawl, peak oil / peak phosphorus, peak water, systems disruption / infrastructural vulnerabilities / terrorism, plagues / pandemics / avian flu / disease transmission, feral cities/ failed states, sprawl, traffic, human migration / neo-nomadism, homelessness, greenhouse gas emissions, gentrification, new urbanism, no public space, Shantytowns, no beer on Sundays.

   Not all of those things are specific to cities, of course, but they are likely to effect cities differently than they will other places.

   Look at ways these problems are facillitated by communication technologies, ways that communication technologies work as a cofactor. The atom bomb gave us the internet and the shopping mall; Paul Baran and Victor Gruen. Is there something significant about the simultaneous development of the internet and the shopping center / Arpanet and Eisenhower Interstate Highway System? Creation of new edges between existing nodes and sprawl as infill?

   Internet facillitates collaborating on disruptive projects (i.e. IEDs), but open source approaches suggested to architecture, permaculture as well.

5. What are some possible solutions to contemporary urban problems made possible by new technologies?

   Investigate the following ideas and buzzwords. Try to trim the meat from the fat. Which strategies favor and facilliate local collaboration and increase the distrubution of political power? Which are dot.com doublespeak? Do these matter if the world runs out of gas and the lights turn off? Which strategies will still work under adverse circumstances (i.e. brown outs, disruption of communication networks)? What about user base and ease of adoption?

   Urban computing / ambient informatics, information aesthetics / methods for dynamic display of data, mapping / gis / gps / geospatial metadata, locative media, resilient communities, ubiquitous computing, ad hoc networks, “battlespace” / real-time simulations.

   What about: ad hoc local internet (low power radio?), diy wireless sensor networks, nitrate and phosporos sensors for enabling precision (urban?) agriculture, facillitating local communication during network outages, rapid prototyping / 3d printing assisting reduction of fossil fuel dependence?

6. What about contemporary thinking / analysis of all of the above?

   Landscape Urbanism, critique of CAD in urban planning and architecture (results informed by interface?), effects of easily available geospatial information on human behavior in urban context (i.e. google maps), Remote sensing / surveillance and privacy issues, how can you be a hermit now? “Reversing the panopticon,” public secrets, critical GIS.