Communications Geography

Background

Interest in communications and geography can be traced to the 1960s. Observers have noted that even then the rapid change in ICTs made it difficult to study the phenomena facilitated by new technologies. The earliest prominent texts were produced in the 1970s, with calls for geographers to engage communication practices and technologies more strongly. Much of this work was situated in the tradition of transportation geography and spatial analysis, with an emphasis on understanding the movement of data and the physical form of networks, both of which could be studied empirically. Such work was seen as supporting the progress-oriented, utopian visions of a technologically enhanced world in the 1970s. This strand of thought dovetailed with a view common among techno-optimists, such as Alvin Toffler, that space and distance were enemies to fulfilling human potential and that technology would usher in a new postindustrial era of peace and prosperity by conquering the tyranny of space. Despite this emphasis, some geographers were engaging social issues in terms of societal changes being facilitated by ICTs, asking about the resulting uneven social impacts. This cluster of work in the 1970s failed to take a strong foothold in geography, and engagement with ICTs dwindled by the end of decade.

The decline in engagement was shaped by a shift in the theoretical orientation of the discipline, namely, toward more humanist, Marxist, and behavioral approaches to geography, which criticized the spatial modeling approach to geography, which had dominated early work on ICTs and geography. What resulted was a shift in the discipline as a whole toward great engagement with concepts of representations of space (how places are portrayed), culture, and political economy. Unfortunately, research examining communication processes declined.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the landscape of ICTs changed dramatically. The early Internet was being used by academics, and the foundations for the transfer of the network to the private sector were under way. Greater levels of digitization of analog data facilitated greater levels of transferability and economies of scale that transformed telecommunications. The breakup of the AT&T monopoly also ushered in an era of greater competition, resulting in new technologies being developed and offered to businesses and, later, individuals. Additionally, the decline in the cost of computing power and the exponential increases in processor speed and storage capacity facilitated the conversion of many forms of communication to digital form. The greater computerization and digitization of many social processes, such as converting voice communication to digital data and money to digital forms, and efforts to attain a “paperless society” have all necessitated adaptation to ICTs, providing social scientists much to study. Today, the processes are further enhanced as new ICTs are adopted by more firms, agencies, and individuals and formerly face-to-face communication is substituted for by social networking sites and text messages. Additionally, the overall diffusion of these computing networks, while uneven and not totally global in scope, reflects the fastest adoption of a communications technology the world has seen.

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