Techno-Medieval: Rise and Fall of Contemporary Metropolitan Networks

In the advent of twentieth century, resonating with the crisis of socio-economic transformation of European cities, Simmel (Metropolis and Mental Life. In Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, ed. D.P. Frisby and M. Featherstone. SAGE Publications Ltd, 1903) argues that metropoles are not the milieus that host the relations of economic, political, technological social networks, yet they are exactly what these relations, so that the metropolitan condition emerges through and under these active vectors. Yet, from the very earliest examples of the history, till the most sophisticated phases of human existences, the development of urban realm and the rise of the cities have been the essential indicators of these relations; whereas each have been connected with one another through diverse networks, powers of capital, sovereignty and knowledge either each enable or disable these connections. Since we’re in the advent of another technological turn, this chapter argues the rise and fall of metropolitan condition and contemporary crises in urban realm, and transfiguring characteristics of public sphere, in order to depict and reflect the impasses. Thus, by developing the text through five consequent parts, initial parts provide a contemporary framing of the recent crisis in the city and the critical authorial stance, while weaving the historical linkages. The emergence and gradual transition of the metropolitan condition as well as the dialectic between the public and private realm are also discussed in this respect. The third and fourth sections discuss the rise of utopias and progressive projections of the modern city, albeit the fall of the late-metropolitan condition and the dystopias as the consequences of shifting manners and diverse catastrophic impulses. The critique of the contemporary condition is reflected by implying the end of an era-the modernist enlightenment-and its disappearing affects through focusing on the ethical and mental transformation of the individual and the society in relation to dark precursor of progress that operates through a subliminal level of suppression via deploying urban networks and technology.