On the theoretical level, a new, technologically informed way of thinking about cities is emerging. Parts of this shift are highly philosophical, involving our ideas of technology itself, which have played a substantial role in traditional urban discourse. Such discourse has been greatly affected by the Newtonian or Industrial Revolution concept of the machine: a construct of clockwork gears, noise, and steam. An example of such Newtonian urban thinking is the influential work of Lewis Mumford, whose studies reflected agrarian reaction to the perceived constriction of cities by inhumane mechanisms. The philosophical nature of Mumford's work did not make it remote from practical decision-making: like many another set of effectively articulated abstract ideas, it helped shape the working vocabularies of generations of planners, policymakers, and urban professionals. We are now moving into a new era of urban philosophy: the era of the post-Newtonian city, with a revised concept of technology based on information systems rather than industrial mechanisms, and with growing multidisciplinary alliances between groups such as technologists, technology theorists, environmentalists, architects, philosophers, economists, researchers, teachers, and urban planners. This will inevitably influence the further evolution of numerous practical urban disciplines over time.