Drawing on multiple examples and historical precedents, media theorist Shannon Mattern explains the folly in Silicon Valley’s ambition to optimize cities.

Created by Regina Flores, Holobiont Urbanism is a research project that sets out to study, map, and visualize the microbiome of New York City, inviting participants to reimagine the city they live in as more than a vast metropolis, but rather as a complex and adaptive biological superstructure.

Riding high on the wave of massive interest in his most recent work “Hyper-Reality,” which depicts a super-mediated Medellín, Colombia of the near future, director/designer Keiichi Matsuda chats with CAN about augmented reality, Silicon Valley, and CGI shopping companions.