An article that discusses urban decay, ground-based strategies, humanistic revival, local resistance to the global metaverse, designers’ new workspace and meaning, phygitalization of reality, system reconstruction and other challenging ideological issues.

The "City” Can't Go Back

In the carbon-based world that our bodies rely on, the information carrying capabilities and transmission efficiency are extremely low compared to the silicon-based world. Human civilization was originally organized by physical space, where all events depend on a specific carbon-based affordance. The silicon-based space is a more advanced organizational container and a more efficient event trigger. It provides effective virtual affordance for enabling remote communication, telepresence and connection. The digital cyber space brings unlimited technical frameworks for meeting, communicating, and collaborating.

In the context of the undeniable constraint of low organizational efficiency, if the carbon-based world does not iterate itself, it will not be able to prevent people from transferring and entrusting their limited life time to the silicon-based world. What is the biggest threat that we practitioners in the field of architecture and cities confront? It's not that artificial intelligence takes away jobs, but the loss of human activities in the carbon-based world. It is also the accelerated decrease of our demand for physical space. It is unfortunate to realize that our living skills in interacting with physical space are constantly improving, while there is decreasing space to function. The design of physical space has become a kind of “dragon slaying technique".




Many people in the post-2000 generation may "don't care, feel, or even care about the city they live in." To put it in extreme terms, perhaps it doesn't matter where they are physically located, as long as there are digital devices that enable the connection to the cyberspace. We are increasingly relying on virtual world to expand our “living world”. 

Pushing forward 20 years, the post-80s did not live such a life since they were young. They have a certain natural awareness and sense of dependence on urban space and the material world. They perceive the world fully with their body, sensations, and movement, with pure attention to the physical artifacts.

At the beginning, the recession of physical interaction brought by pandemic seemed to be a temporary situation that was believed to be diminished after. But in fact, the public may gradually realize that not having physical interaction and reducing the in-person communication seems to be an unacceptable loss. The world is still rich and colorful with unlimited interaction in cyberspace. Social media and videoconferencing tools empower the interpersonal connection. The urban space that originally carried an important part of life does not seem to be a necessity in current situation. The increasingly developed express delivery and food delivery system is a typical example of the silicon-based world competing for the share of the carbon-based world organization.

The reality is this: the city that we once thought would be prosperous forever may never return.

The "Hybrid World”

There is no purely carbon-based space in this age.

Living in a world where we are already surrounded by screens, devices, and projections, the boundary between real and virtual has long been blurring. The extended reality already proves its feasibility: the way we communicate, understand and perceive is largely affected by our daily use of technological devices. Artifacts such as mobile phones serve as mediums that constantly reproduce data, information and ourselves. Mediums are not only the extension of the human, they also mediate our indirect relationship with the world, appearing as a new aesthetic experience and identity embodiment. Mediums are no longer just the technical consequences of digital computing, but also include the new role of machines: the new technical logic in information organization may help us better perceive ourselves and help us understand the encircling mediums.

Vision has become a non-bodily capability in this era. The human eye has been assimilated into a carbon-based screen that can zoom, freeze, fast-forward or playback. As I am holding my mobile phone talking to you, you are taking pictures or recording video from time to time - it is difficult for us to distinguish whether these sensory materials exist and spread in the context of carbon-based or silicon-based. Whether we like it or not, the purely carbon-based world of the past is gone forever.

Once upon a time, urbanization itself was a dynamic motivation for city development. Twenty or thirty years ago, as long as houses were built, cities were developing rapidly, and GDP was rising. This logic no longer holds true as urbanization has lost its fundamental momentum at this age. According to statistics, the planned total population of Chinese cities is now 3.4 billion, almost 2 billion more than the current population. This is obviously impossible to achieve. As a result, urban development is now increasingly showing its involution: some cities have shifted from global development to local development, while many cities have gradually stagnated in development, and even began to shrink and decline. Most cities will be "dumped" by the times , which is cruel but unavoidable.

Carbon-based cities are already showing a declining trend as they continue with the current inertia. Imagining the silicon-based future, many will substitute a world picture similar to "Black Mirror" or "The Matrix". The truth is, before the technical conditions are developed, before our consciousness can completely be independent from the vehicle of the body, there is still a long way to go for a fully silicon-based future. In the context of our generations, the prospect of disembodied life still seems vague. At the moment, the context of our discussion should actually focus more on "silicon-carbon-based" reality. A hybrid world, a phygital reality, a system of interaction in the new world when digital space penetrates the physical and integrates within a person.

Is it too presumptuous to imagine that we will inhabit such hybrid space, living increasingly by the standards of virtual reality, where the distinction between virtual and real will be blurrying? Renaissance artists revealed geographic space through fiction, while modern information technology allows us to inhabit our own fiction. Instead of using virtual world to escape the reality, we create a heterogeneous reality (Rozelle, 1991, p. 89). Perhaps the whole distinction between "fact" and "fiction"  is obsolete. And it would be better to speak of "faction", because fiction has become fact. The de-enchantment of  physical space in modernity is here dialectically transformed into a kind of digital re-enchantment.

The hybrid world is hypothesisly a transitional status. It is becoming a new living environment that our generation cannot avoid or escape from. The question comes to how we understand it, how we define it, and how we approach it. While the virtual reality is gradually becoming indistinguishable from the nonvirtual world, our physical reality is experiencing increasing modification from the silicon-based world. It is a world of the entanglement of digital and physical. There is no right and wrong between the two, it is about how us, while possessing the physical body, seek “our subjective presence in the other reality”. 

Human spaces are always intertwined with each other, which results in those "mixed spaces". The hybrid world is demonstrating similar characters. Heterogeneous spaces are intertwined in various ways, forming a variety of maze-like connections, and these heterogeneous spaces strengthen, weaken and transform each other. Not only are parts of the physical world transformed into virtual environments, but our everyday world is also increasingly intertwined with virtual space and virtual time. 

Someone once asked, is the Metaverse a digital utopian fantasy, or a new digital religion? Personally there is an essential difference between the two. Human fantasy comes from the innate desire to transcend the various pains and constraints of the real world. Fantasy often exists, but tools do not. What is said here includes both the tools of thought and the tools of reality construction. Every age is waiting for its unique tool for the realization of fantasy. Thomas More particularly constructed a great utopian concept system, which is also a pioneering thinking tool. The dilemma of Utopia is that when it is supposed to be implemented on a carbon-based world, it lacks realistic construction tools. What Utopia doesn't enable that Metaverse provides now, is the fact that Metaverse creates new construction tools. The metaverse is not a neo-utopia, but an existence that is both virtual and physical. It is a new medium: mediums are no longer just the technical consequences of digital computing, but also include the new role of machines: the new technical logic in information organization may help us better perceive ourselves and help us understand the encircling mediums.

The silicon-based space is an existence parallel to the carbon-based space that enables high fidelity of sensory simulation. Its notable information transformation efficiency makes it a huge competitive force compared to carbon-based space. With the advancement of technology, the silicon-based space can even make human sensation “more real" than the direct physical experience in the carbon-based world. When simulation technology is advanced enough, these simulated settings may potentially be inhabited by virtual individuals who will experience the whole spectrum of life, including birth, development, aging, and death.

However, the various advantages of silicon-based space are exactly what we need to be vigilant about. Take efficiency as an example, if we blindly pursue it and let the silicon-based space develop disorderly, we will very likely repeat the same mistakes. Looking back to the history of carbon-based cities: as one of the technological foundations of modern civilization, automobiles have profoundly shaped the planning logic of the modern city we live in. But such a spatial construction logic based on technological superiority is exactly the underlying causes of dullness of modern urban life.

Taking creativity nowadays as an example, we are living in an age when the creation process is largely aided by computational simulation and reproduction. Photoshop fastens the tools and color switching compared to physical painting, 3D modeling software enables a more effective way of constructing an artefacts, renderings enable designers to visualize the design in a photorealistic style. It’s undeniable that simulation plays an indispensable role in the creation process. However, problems also lie in such automatic and programmatic processes of generating a design or art piece. Computational simulation is programmed beforehand, that is, the creation method, the outcome, is preset and manipulated to a certain degree. At the time we feel that we are empowered by the software, the machine is also dominating the way we think, design and iterate. Turkle mentioned the “owning design” of how “the computer’s suite of ‘defaults’ constrained our[her] imagination”. How to maintain the ownership of the creation is what we as creators should keep in mind. 

Huge social changes always comes with key technological advances, our history of world civilization is full of such examples. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg invented metal movable type printing, and the number of literate people in society increased dramatically. The entire civilization immediately experienced a serious shortage of supply in terms of labor market. The social division of labor did not require so many literate people in the society at that time. When everyone was able to read the Bible and understand the small leaflets of Martin Luther, the religious revolution follow spontaneously.

We are now facing a similar situation. The foundation of civilization is subtly shifting, the dimensions of civilization are progressively re-scaling. Technology is such an ontology machine, which results in unlimited alters on human world and human itself. The content of the current civilization will be transferred from the carbon-based environment to the silicon-based space in a large scale. What kind of contradiction between supply and demand will arise, what kind of ecological balance will be broken, what kind of relationship chain will be formed, and what kind of structural level will be rebuilt? Should we act positively and strive to achieve post-human life form to fit cyberspace, or should we rather try to adjust our body to our space-time dimension? To think in a more fundamental way, questions regarding the relationship between the mind and the world are probably the most important of all, such as What is consciousness at all? How can we know about reality?

Embracing the silicon-based world vigilantly while actively updating the carbon-based world is within our responsibility. We must learn to reawaken, rethink, and rework in the "hybrid world".

Humanistic Renaissance

One of the great impacts of advances in silicon-based technology on carbon-based spaces is to weaken the sense of security and tolerance of the environment. We are in a state where we may be monitored and documented at any time. Anything can be fully exposed in the night scene mode of their mobile phones. We don't have real nights anymore. And we have lost many more than that.

In the past, what happened in physical reality was difficult to be completely recorded, nor could it be accurately traced back. As silicon-based technology develops, we have easier access to recording and retracing space-related events. Consequently, individual subjective life experience is isolated from the physical environment. The way we perceive, examine, and comprehend the spatial environment has also been subtly altered. In the past, it was difficult for individual vision to provide an organizational structure centered on “public gaze". However, silicon-based technology has quietly implanted the logic of “apperance-centered" social organization in our society. Social media is a typical example in terms of how ideal self-presentation is massively sought after.  

In this age, various elements in our living environment are manufactured to flatter our retina. Under the hegemony of silicon-based vision, the carbon-based environment has lost the ability to interact with other human senses, body, and spirit. Most of the digital experiences are designed to only appeal to our eyes, with the lack of engagement with the realities of our physical, experimental subjectives — our bodies. Despite all the work we have seen in silicon-based world in designing for embodiment, the actual corporeal, pulsating, live, felt body has been notably absent from theory and practical design work.

As mentioned earlier, carbon-based spaces are completely uncompetitive in terms of efficiency compared to silicon-based spaces. However, the existing urban planning is based on the concept of spatial organization efficiency such as neighborhood units, supporting indicators, and flow structures. It is conceivable that these concepts will gradually lose their meaning in the future, or at least lose their primary consideration. The organizational logic of our urban development is bound to usher in a fundamental alternative.

This article aims to emphasize humanistic urbanism. Humanity is the final anchor point of meaning for carbon-based cities in the context of the silicon-based era. It is also the irreplaceable value of the silicon-based world. I predict that "humanistic urbanism" will become the new underlying logic of urban development in the era of silicon-carbon integration. It emphasizes the unity of body and mind, which concerns the orchestration of the “whole”, emtying materials of all their potential and thereby providing vertile grounds for meaning-making. 

We can already discover the value reorganization centered around humanistic space. In the earliest days, the centerpiece of library buildings was the catalog hall, where many people were to retrieve card catalogs. However, the library's most important hub space suddenly became meaningless with the online retrieval system. What people really need from a library is actually a "collective temple" where they can feel the significance of learning knowledge outside the functional space of pure reading.

The same is true for bookstores. Now it is difficult for offline bookstores to make profits by simply selling books. What bookstores sell is actually the experience and emotional value. Bookstores have gradually transformed into a special cultural place in the city, where there are exhibitions, book clubs, dramas, and small chamber music performances. People use books as the artifact and medium to discover and create a renewed sense of meaning.

On the one hand, the silicon-based world is alienating our carbon-based space and our cognition and understanding of it; on the other hand, the silicon-based world also solved the problem of overloading the efficiency of carbon-based space, where the humanistic value concealed by the concept is highlighted.

Endemic resistance —
The Global Hegemony Implicit in the Metaverse

As we are witnessing that metaverse begins its colonization of the world and humanity, we should firstly understand that metaverse should not be understood as a kind of Hinterwelt, that is, a completely different behind-the-scenes world beyond the world we are familiar with. Instead, it is a space that inhabits social and biological individuals and transforms them from within.

In the recent context of the heated discussions, assumptions, and predictions of the Metaverse, I discovered a phenomenon: the development of the Metaverse seems to be shrouded in a shadow of hegemony. Various companies are scrambling to create a unique and highest-level platform that can be used uniformly by the whole world. All human civilizations in the future must be built on this unique Metaverse platform. The Chinese translation of the name "Yuan Universe" also demonstrates the similar meaning. In essence, this is a replica of the idea of globalization since World War II, especially after the end of the Cold War. In my opinion, this path is particularly not advisable.

I advocate an idea that the silicon-based space should be open, inclusive, and diverse. The digital reality provides a much wider imagination space than the real world with unlimited potentials. I'd rather live in a silicon-based world of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of different silicon-based colonies, each with its own physics, universe, living and dying, than a beautiful and charming "only metaverse" that allows no other choice. Such idea will paves the way for the realization of electronic squares (a direct democracy, according to the model of the Athenians in ancient Greece) worldwide. These new technologies will certainly benefit underdeveloped areas from this process of informatization and globalization, improving their impoverished economies (factories, railways, roads) and culture (libraries, museums, theaters, concert halls, etc.) and basic facilities. Last but not least, the emergence of metaverse can make the old dream of the 20th century avant-garde come true—everyone can be the creator of their virtual life and multiple identities.

My claim here is the establishment of as many "endemic metaverses" as possible at this stage. On the one hand, the silicon-based world needs regionality to resist globalization; on the other hand, the silicon-based world needs to creates a special emotional connection with the local physical world. A somewhat counter-intuitive point of view: the silicon-based world is not without indigenous peoples. We are the aborigines, and our memory and thoughts are all grown from the carbon-based world. Our consciousness and emotions are still more profoundly connected with the carbon-based world.

Although the silicon-based world can accommodate unconstrained innovations, we should not ignore the possible path of the "endemic metaverse”. It will provide a developmental singularity, a cultural framework, and a new space for the metaverse. In the almost unlimited supply of silicon-based space, many different silicon-based worlds can coexist in parallel without interfering with each other. The conflict of civilizations might even gradually vanish with the entanglement of the multiple characteristics of the silicon-based space.

Concept Dispelled:
Reality, existence, value, meaning ...

Redundancy is a necessary condition for the emergence and development of civilization. It is also the greatest advantages that silicon-based space brings to mankind. In the process of gradual siliconization, with the improvement of efficiency, the redundancy of the whole society will also increase. The things that once limit the rhythm of our lives no longer occupy our thoughts and energy. Human intelligence is free from the redundancy to focus on other meaningful things. Our perception, our attitudes towards things, will also undergo fundamental changes.

If human beings can practically dominate time through silicon-based space one day, they can truly exert their free will. Even though this is a distant future that we can only look forward to rather than imagine. Ubiquitous silicon-baed technology induces our thinking, making us think that we can perceive everything from the dimension of information, and finally comprehend information as the fundamental construction of the world. Or, perhaps virtual reality is not to control, escape, entertain or communicate, its ultimate bearing may be to alter and remedy our sense of reality. 

Many people hold all kinds of skepticism about such a future. Will infinite time, countless possibilities, and unlimited freedom, will our human civilization be completely diminished? If consciousness can be separated from the body, it also means that it can be manipulated, edited, and deleted. In that sense, what is real, what is existence? Will morality, ethics, value, and meaning be subverted if we can create countless parallel or nested silicon-based spaces? Will civilization become more equitable, or will there be more efficient tools for slavery? Will an individual eventually become a human being, or become an NPC someone else's world, or this individual gradually merge into a real collective consciousness?

Right now,
To construct is to explain.
Construction is the meaning.