Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Rosy and premature predictions that the internet would unleash human potential
in low income communities, level hierarchies and blur the lines of authority have
given way to more realistic assessments that point to the exacerbated social and
economic tensions that accompany the diffusion of this technology in many
communities, enhancing the divisions between the information ''haves'' and ''have
nots.'' This division mirrors the increasing polarization of Western societies in
general, noting the disintegration of the public sphere and the commodification of
private ones. In an age in which social life is not only increasingly mediated
through computer networks but fundamentally altered by them, the annihilation of
public spaces and their reconstruction around the increasingly commodified,
privatized spaces of cyberspace has disturbing implications for those without the
wealth and power to gain access to the internet. Participation in electronic com-
munities reflects the social contexts that shape the adoption and diffusion of
internet technology; thus, the definition of ''access'' must be broadened from
simply owning a computer and logging into the internet to include the institutional
and cultural forces that entice and encourage people to remain digitally connected.
As the internet has diffused through progressively broader tiers of Western society,
albeit unequally, new users frequently resemble the general population with
greater frequency; fears that the ''digital divide'' will remain in perpetuity,
therefore, may be exaggerated.
Lastly, it is abundantly evident that geography still matters. Access to the
internet is deeply conditioned by where one is, which is in turn a reflection of
relations of wealth and power. Long standing categories of core and periphery are
all too apparent within cyberspace, such as the divisions between developed and
less-developed nations or cities and rural areas. Thus, electronic systems simul-
taneously reflect and transform existing topographies of class, gender, money, and
ethnicity, creating and recreating hierarchies of places mirrored in the spatial
architecture of computer networks. Far from eliminating differences among places,
systems such as the internet allow their differences to be exploited. As both a site
of fixed investments and a space of flows, the internet in an age of hypermobile
capital must be judged as much in terms of equality of access as efficiency of use,
by the ways it generates benefits to those who need it most as well as to those who
use it heavily.
2.4 Regional Geographies of the Global Internet
Despite some proclamations that cyberspace is spaceless, that distance is dead, or
that we live in a flat earth, the reality of internet usage is that it is thoroughly
interpenetrated with regional, national, and local political systems, economies, and
cultures. Thus, the geography of the internet is deeply conditioned by, and in turn
shapes, the spatiality of the world's socioeconomic systems. To shed more light on
this topic, this section offers a brief tour of the regional dimensions of the internet
in the world's major regions.
