Abstract
There exists considerable literature on the public face of civil architecture: what it is, how we may judge it, how we are changed by it. We have lived in buildings and cities for millennia, so the nature of visible architecture is part of the fabric of our lives. We are now coming to live in structures made not of atoms, but of bits. Here we ponder how these things unseen may become part of the fabric of our lives. The author also explains why this column is morphing from "On Architecture" to "On Computing." © 1984-2012 IEEE.