Geography Reference
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rather than mass audiences. Web-based banking experienced slow growth
(even though it is considerably cheaper for banks than automatic teller
machines), as have Internet-based bill payments, mortgages, and insurance.
Internet-based sales of stocks comprise 15 percent of all trades. Indeed, des-
pite predictions that “click and order” shopping would eliminate “brick and
mortar” stores, e-tailing has been slow to catch on, however, comprising only
a fraction of total U.S. retail sales, perhaps because it lacks the emotional
content of shopping.
Another version of e-commerce concerns universities, many of which have
invested heavily in Web-based distance learning courses. Although such pro-
grams are designed to attract nonlocal and nontraditional students, many of
whom may not be able to take lecture-based courses in the traditional man-
ner, they also re
financial constraints and declining public
subsidies that many educational institutions face, which may see distance
learning as a means of attracting additional students, and tuition at relatively
low marginal costs. Distance learning has provoked fears that it accelerates
the corporatization of academia, while others have questioned whether the
chat rooms upon which it relies heavily as part of its delivery system are an
e
fl
ect the mounting
fi
ff
ective substitute for the face-to-face teaching and learning that classrooms
o
er.
Many of the Internet's uses revolve around entertainment, personal com-
munications, research, downloading
ff
files, and online video games (Wark 1995;
Shields 1996; Crang et al. 1999). Webcasting, or broadcasts over the Internet
(typically of sports or entertainment events), demands high-bandwidth cap-
acity but comprises a signi
fi
fi
cant share of Internet tra
c today. Downloading
of music
films has become a big business, raising corporate con-
cerns over intellectual property rights. Internet-based telephony (VOIP, e.g.,
Skype) has grown rapidly. The widespread popularity of e-mail indicates that
asynchronous communication is often preferable to the constant mutual
monitoring involved in synchronous dialogue. The extremely low cost of
e-mail has generated copious quantities of “spam” e-mail (unwanted com-
mercial messages), which constitute an ever-larger, and increasingly annoy-
ing, share of e-mail tra
fi
files and
fi
c (by some estimates as high as 75 percent). In the
age in which social life is increasingly mediated through computer networks,
including extensive use of e-mail and the World Wide Web, the reconstruction
of interpersonal relations around the digitized spaces of cyberspace is of the
utmost signi
er qualitatively
from face-to-face ones serves as a useful reminder that telecommunications
change not only what we know about the world, but also how we know and
experience it.
The Internet is also a political arena in which numerous, diverse positions
are articulated and contend with one another. Cyberpolitics mirrors those of
its nonelectronic counterparts, although the boundaries between the two
realms are increasingly fuzzy. Web-logs, or “blogs,” for example, have become
increasingly important sources of personal, social, and political commentary,
fi
cance. However, the fact that cybercontacts di
ff
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