Geographies of Information

Almost fifty years after the spatial experiments with the architecture of communication in the 1960s, and twenty years after the “death of distance” prophecies of the 1990s, we are witnessing the emergence of a new spatial turn in information and communication technologies (ICTs). These digital technologies are fostering innovative means for communication, participation, sociability, and commerce that are different from the “real space” of homes, city squares, and streets. Yet at the same time, various material and infrastructural imprints required by contemporary ICTs—such as data centers, fiber-optic cables, and IT office parks—have contributed to a great buildup in physical space. A hybrid condition has emerged from the interaction of virtual spatiality and the physical imprints of ICTs, resulting in forms, places, and territories in which the dynamism and fluidity of contemporary networks of information become solidified.New Geographies, 7 presents historical perspectives, theoretical framings, and new design paradigms that contribute to a more grounded understanding of the kind of hybrid spaces that ICTs engender, the scales at which they operate, and the processes by which this production of space is manifested in both advanced and emerging economies.