Geographic Interpretations Of The Internet

This book introduces the Internet through a systematic geographical interpretation, thus shedding light on the Internet as a spatial entity. The book’s approach is to extend basic concepts developed for terrestrial geography to cyberspace, most notably those relating to space, structure, place, distance, mobility, and presence. It further considers the Internet by its constitution of information space, communications space, and screen space. By using well-known concepts from traditional human geography, this book proposes a combination of terrestrial and virtual geographies, which may in turn help in coping with Internet structures and contents. The book appeals to human and economic geographers, especially those interested in information and Internet geographies. It may also be of special interest and importance to sociologists and media scholars and students dealing with communication technology and the Internet.

This timely book presents a wide range of quantitative methods, including complex network analysis and econometric modelling, to illustrate how the Internet both follows, and at the same time challenges, more traditional geographies. Emmanouil Tranos explores the spatiality of the Internet, its physical infrastructure, and the geographic and socio-economic factors that shape its spatial distribution. He shows that although the Internet is a technical system with strong topological attributes, an almost 'hidden' spatial dimension also exists. The scattering of Internet Backbone Networks across European city-regions is compared with the aviation network in order to better understand the topology of the digital infrastructure. Finally, a causality analysis demonstrates the significant positive effect of the Internet infrastructure in the economic development of regions characterized by high absorptive capacity. This book will prove a highly fascinating read for those with an interest in Internet geographies, ICTs, regional development and infrastructure, digital economy, network analysis, and regional science. Practitioners working on local and regional development, as well as those focusing on ICTs, digital economy and smart cities, will also find this book to be an invaluable reference tool.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of recent research on the internet, emphasizing its spatial dimensions, geospatial applications, and the numerous social and geographic implications such as the digital divide and the mobile internet. Written by leading scholars in the field, the book sheds light on the origins and the multiple facets of the internet. It addresses the various definitions of cyberspace and the rise of the World Wide Web, draws upon media theory, as well as explores the physical infrastructure such as the global skein of fibre optics networks and broadband connectivity. Several economic dimensions, such as e-commerce, e-tailing, e-finance, e-government, and e-tourism, are also explored. Apart from its most common uses such as Google Earth, social media like Twitter, and neogeography, this volume also presents the internet’s novel uses for ethnographic research and the study of digital diasporas. Illustrated with numerous graphics, maps, and charts, the book will best serve as supplementary reading for academics, students, researchers, and as a professional handbook for policy makers involved in communications, media, retailing, and economic development.

Federal broadband policy has largely ignored urban areas, where most Americans live. Using an original and unprecedented multi-level analysis of access and use in low-income neighborhoods, Digital Cities tells the story of information technology use and inequality in American cities and metropolitan areas. With original data and detailed analysis, this book helps us understand the oft-overlooked urban "digital divide" and what can be done to fix it.

This groundbreaking book analyses the geography of the commercial Internet industry. It presents the first accurate map of Internet domains in the world, by country, by region, by city, and for the United States, by neighborhood. Demonstrates the extraordinary spatial concentration of the Internetindustry. Explains the geographic features of the high tech venture capital behind the Internet economy. Demonstrates how venture capitalists' abilities to create and use tacit knowledge contributes to the clustering of the internet industry Draws on in-depth interviews and field work in San Francisco Bay Area and New York City.

Today, roughly 2 billion people use the internet, and its applications have flourished in number and importance. This volume will examine the growth and geography of the internet from a political economy perspective. Its central motivation is to illustrate that cyberspace does not exist in some aspatial void, but is deeply rooted in national and local political and cultural contexts. Toward that end, it will invoke a few major theorists of cyberspace, but apply their perspectives in terms that are accessible to readers with no familiarity with them. Beyond summaries of the infrastructure that makes the internet possible and global distributions of users, it delves into issues such as the digital divide to emphasize the inequalities that accompany the growth of cyberspace. It also addresses internet censorship, e-commerce, and e-government, issues that have received remarkably little scholarly attention, particularly from a spatial perspective. Throughout, it demonstrates that in cyberspace, place matters, so that no comprehensive understanding of the internet can be achieved without considering how it is embedded within, and in turn changes, local institutional and political contexts. Thus the book rebuts simplistic “death of distance” views or those that assert there is, or can be, a “one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter” model of the internet applicable to all times and places.

The Internet has redefined how maps are used. No longer restricted to paper, maps are now transmitted almost instantly and delivered to the user in a fraction of the time required to distribute maps on paper. They are viewed in a more timely fashion. The Internet presents the map user with both a faster method of map distribution and different forms of mapping. This book provides an international perspective on this growing area of information dissemination.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of recent research on the internet, emphasizing its spatial dimensions, geospatial applications, and the numerous social and geographic implications such as the digital divide and the mobile internet. Written by leading scholars in the field, the book sheds light on the origins and the multiple facets of the internet. It addresses the various definitions of cyberspace and the rise of the World Wide Web, draws upon media theory, as well as explores the physical infrastructure such as the global skein of fibre optics networks and broadband connectivity. Several economic dimensions, such as e-commerce, e-tailing, e-finance, e-government, and e-tourism, are also explored. Apart from its most common uses such as Google Earth, social media like Twitter, and neogeography, this volume also presents the internet’s novel uses for ethnographic research and the study of digital diasporas. Illustrated with numerous graphics, maps, and charts, the book will best serve as supplementary reading for academics, students, researchers, and as a professional handbook for policy makers involved in communications, media, retailing, and economic development.