The New Geography

How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape
FROM CHAPTER 1: DIGITAL GEOGRAPHY

In a manner not seen since the onset of the industrial revolution, technology is reshaping the landscape of American communities. Just as the railroad, telegraph, and mass-production factory transformed the social and economic reality of cities, towns, and rural hamlets in the nineteenth century, the rise of the digital economy is repealing the economic and social geography of contemporary America.

The digital revolution not only accelerates the speed with which information is processed and disseminated, it also restates the relation of space and time within our communities. Decisions about where to locate businesses, for example--once dependent on questions of access to ports, roads, rails, or raw materials--are increasingly dependent instead on the ability to link often scarce human resources. This trend toward virtualization seems virtually unstoppable; electronic business-to-business transactions, estimated at $43 billion in 1998, are expected to grow to over $1.3 trillion by 2003.

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