Telecommunications and Geography

Telecommunications have a long history of folding and reshaping space that extends to the telegraph in the mid 19th century and the telephone in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, the collection, transformation, and transmission of large volumes of information constitute a fundamental part of contemporary economies. The majority of jobs in industrialized nations consist of information processing in one form or another. These functions have increased in importance as computing has dramatically declined in cost and risen in power, the production of all goods and services has become more information intensive, technological change accelerated, product cycles shortened, and a deregulated, worldwide market has increased uncertainty and accelerated the competition among places for investment and jobs.

Information systems used to be confined to simple telephone ...