Geographies of the Internet

Barney Warf

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000740929
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Computer Science

This book offers a comprehensive overview of recent research on the internet, emphasizing its spatial dimensions, geospatial applications, and the numerous social and geographic implications such as the digital divide and the mobile internet.

Written by leading scholars in the field, the book sheds light on the origins and the multiple facets of the internet. It addresses the various definitions of cyberspace and the rise of the World Wide Web, draws upon media theory, as well as explores the physical infrastructure such as the global skein of fibre optics networks and broadband connectivity. Several economic dimensions, such as e-commerce, e-tailing, e-finance, e-government, and e-tourism, are also explored. Apart from its most common uses such as Google Earth, social media like Twitter, and neogeography, this volume also presents the internet's novel uses for ethnographic research and the study of digital diasporas.

Illustrated with numerous graphics, maps, and charts, the book will best serve as supplementary reading for academics, students, researchers, and as a professional handbook for policy makers involved in communications, media, retailing, and economic development.

1Introduction

Barney Warf

Like the wheel and the printing press, the internet has had, and continues to have, profound impacts on the world. Roughly 55% of the planet used the internet in 2019, and for users it has deeply affected communications, consumption, entertainment, politics, and culture. In ways ranging from electronic banking to online education, internet gambling and videogames, e-government and e-commerce, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, the internet has become woven into the world economy and everyday life. Never have so many people been able to contact one another so easily, obtain news, purchase goods, file complaints, and save time than today. For large numbers of users, the real and virtual worlds have become inextricably intertwined; for them, the internet is a necessity, not a luxury. Seen this way, the dichotomies off-line/on-line does not do justice to the diverse ways in which the “real” and virtual worlds are interpenetrated. However, for those without access to the information highway, the internet may represent a new source of inequality.

The internet may be defined as a global system of interconnected computer networks, that is, a network of networks, which billions of computers across the planet. Its decentralized architecture allows any computer to communicate with almost any other using the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), the language that allows routers and servers to exchange information with one another. The speeds of connection vary considerably, but have become ever-faster with the widespread adoption of fiber optic cables. In the 21st century, as cellular phones have become ubiquitous, wireless connectivity has become widespread. The World Wide Web is part of the internet, consisting of documents written in the hypertext markup language (HTML), which enables them to be accessed by web browsers. Users find documents on websites, each of which may have several webpages, using their unique Universal Resource Locator (URL) codes. The WWW contains countless billions of hypertext documents, including not only text but figures, music, and video. Finally, cyberspace, a term coined by science-fiction writer William Gibson (1984), refers to the digitized, virtual “world in the wires,” that is, computer-mediated communications, augmented reality, and virtual reality. Although cyberspace is often conceived as a domain independent of the “real” or physical world, in reality the virtual and real worlds shape each other continuously.

A brief history of the internet

The internet has a relatively short but fascinating history. (For more thorough treatments, see Hafner and Lyon 1996; Banks 2008; Ryan 2013). It originated in the 1960s under the U.S. Defense Department’s Agency Research Projects Administration (ARPA), which designed it to allow computers to communicate with one another in the event of a nuclear attack. ARPA gave rise to innovations such as packet switching, neural networks, queuing theory, adaptive routing, and file transfer protocols. In the process, it created a network quite different from the centralized system of the telephone company (i.e., the monopoly once held by AT&T), which relied on analogue information: rather, the process of digitization facilitated a decentralized, then distributed network. The earliest signs of what eventually became ARPANET connected universities such as Stanford, UCLA, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Over time, the military goals were soon supplemented by civilian ones. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson created the first computer messages for personal use, inventing email.

Administration of the internet has varied over time. Between 1984 and 1995, it fell to the National Science Foundation, which transformed ARPANET into NSFNET, a largely academic network of supercomputers in a few select universities. Meanwhile, the world’s first cybercommunities arose, such as the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) in San Francisco. On the border of Switzerland and France, the European Particle Physics Lab (CERN) developed hypertext and Universal Resource Locators (URLs), making possible the World Wide Web and user-friendly browsers. Tim Berners-Lee, often called the “father of the World Wide Web,” played a key role in this process. In the 1990s, amidst a wave of neoliberal privatization, the U.S. government shifted control to a consortium of telecommunications corporations. Meanwhile, the system began to explode in use on an international scale. The number of websites grew exponentially, from roughly one million in 1990 to almost eight billion in 2019. Next to the mobile or cellular phone, the internet is the most rapidly diffusing technology in world history. Global access deeply shaped by the density, reliability, and affordability of fiber optics lines, which were being laid down in large numbers.

In the late 1990s and the 21st century, two developments greatly affected the internet: Web 2.0 and the rise of the mobile internet. Web 2.0 allows users to contribute material to webpages rather than simply consume their information passively, allowing users to upload content and enjoy instantaneous interactions. Thus were born Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and location-based services. The invention of smartphones, or phones that can access the internet, gave rise to the mobile or wireless internet (Arminen 2007; Kellerman 2010). Rapid decreases in the cost of mobile phones made them affordable for vast numbers of people; today more than 90% of the planet owns one. Mobile internet access is particularly important in the developing world. The mobile internet greatly enhanced its accessibility, adding flexibility and convenience. Text messages and Twitter have become common for vast numbers of people.

As the internet became more user-friendly and computer costs declined, the number of the world’s netizens world skyrocketed (Figure 1.1). In December, 2019, more than 4.5 billion people used the internet, approximately 58% of the world’s population. However, the geographical distribution of internet users is highly uneven: internet penetration rates are far higher in the developed world than the developing one, although they are rising rapidly everywhere. internet growth, however, has still excluded almost half the planet, a phenomenon known as the digital divide, or unequal social and spatial access. This phenomenon takes many forms, including class, education, gender, ethnicity, and age. Everywhere, the young are most likely to use digital technologies; many young people are digital natives, never knowing what the world was like before the internet. Readers of a certain age who recall pre-internet days are in a sense similar to the last generation to experience the world before the automobile became widespread in the early 20th century.

Figure 1.1Growth in global internet users, 1990–2018.

Source: Author, using data from Internet World Stats (Internetworldstats.com).

The impacts of the internet

The internet has such a large number of effects on peoples, societies, and places that it is difficult to list them all. Some of the major consequences include the economy, social and behavioral effects, and political ones that include governance.

Economic impacts

The internet’s economic effects extend into every part of the economy. Farmers can use the internet to manage supply chains, logistics, and output, and control irrigation systems remotely (McKinion et al. 2004). Telecenters in countries such as India allow farmers to acquire information about crop prices and best practices, acquire land titles, and bypass corrupt and intermediaries (Pick et al. 2014). In manufacturing, the internet has given new power to machinery, including robots and artificial intelligence (Caputo et al. 2016). Producer services, too, have been markedly altered, such as with the movement of many clerical functions, call centers, tax preparation, and radiology jobs to the developing world. In finance, enormous sums of funds move at the speed of light through the world’s fiber optics networks. Internet banking has reduced the need for labor at the retail end, lowering costs, improving efficiency and convenience (Hanafizadeh et al. 2014). Digital currencies such as Bitcoin are profoundly affecting money supplies and currency markets, while crowdfunding has let many projects emerge that otherwise would have been starved for investment funds.

Consumption, too, has been reshaped by the internet. Advertising has been revolutionized by adware (Hanafizadeh and Behboudi 2012). e-Tailing allows shopping with a few clicks of the mouse, giving rise to giants such as Amazon. Increasingly, old-fashioned brick-and-mortar shopping is giving way to “click-and-order” (Forman 2009). Supply and distribution networks have evolved accordingly. The internet allows, for example, small producers to reach global markets, a boon to small firms in the developing world.

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, has several varieties. Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce includes electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions and greatly accelerated product cycles and enhanced competition. Business-to-consumer (B2) e-commerce links suppliers and customers via the web, dramatically altering the volumes and quantities of items bought (e.g., Amazon Prime) (Gong 2009). Business-to-government (B2G) e-commerce involves transactions between private firms and the state, such as requests for proposals; applications for permits, licenses, and patents; online registration of companies; obtaining government contracts; and paying various types of taxes.

In transportation, the internet has unleashed waves of change (Thomopoulos et al. 2015). Smartphones and laptops allow people to work while travelling or at home, for better or worse. Global positioning systems (GPS) have made driving and finding locations far easier. With telework or telecommuting, many employees can work at home. Smart traffic systems have made roads faster and safer. Firms such as Uber and Lyft have created enormous competition for traditional models of transportation. Tourists can use the internet to obtain information about prospective destinations, book hotels, buy tickets, and reserve cars (Condratov 2013; Standing et al. 2014). Taxi drivers and travel agents represent victims of the internet’s “creative destruction.”

Energy production and consumption have also been greatly affected by the internet. For example, parallel and distributed computing has raised the efficiency of energy suppliers in the face of constraints such as security and environmental limitations. Smart grids – computerized controls and sensor networks – allow for more efficient ways of managing electricity supply and demand, improving the generation, transmission, distribution, and applications. Smart cities, which integrate information technology in numerous ways, including smart traffic systems and smart homes, are a viable means of promoting sustainable development, fostering renewable energy sources, and reducing carbon use (Strengers 2013; Komninos 2014).

Social, behavioral, and psychological impacts

There are innumerable social and behavioral impacts of the internet. Today, more people are more connected technologically to one another than at any other time in human existence. More than one-half of the world’s population uses the internet, and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have become thoroughly intertwined with daily existence as a means of communication, news sharing, organizing, and protest. Email is indispensable for almost all internet users: the world sends 145 billion email messages each day. Smartphones and texting have become ubiquitous: the planet sends more than 250,000 text messages every second. Blogs and YouTube have given unprecedented numbers of people the ability to make their views heard.

Digital communications and social media have played significant roles in the formation of individual and social identities, allow people to stay in touch with like-minded others to form classic “communities without propinquity.” Some observers argue that meaningful interactions are invariably preceded by earlier face-to-face ties and that digitally mediated communities are ephemeral and lack emotional depth. Digital social media may actually make people less, not more, sociable (Turkle 2011). The internet may even generate subtle changes in brain structure, such as shortened attention spans (Carr 2010). The enormous enhancement of human extensibility that the internet allows has shifted many social interactions from a series of one-to-one ties to networks of one-to-many connections (Adams 2005). Digital networks allow people to present different sides of themselves to different audiences, allowing for fragmented, multifaceted selves to co-exist in one body. Digital media also blur the borders between public and private life. For many people, the digital, on-line self and the non-digital, analogue self have become hopelessly entangled. The internet has thoroughly reshaped many forms of entertainment, including on-line television (e.g., Netflix), videogames, music, and publishing. Online dating sites and pornography have affected sexuality, as have sexting and cyberstalking.

These issues raise serious concerns about digital privacy. Corporations can use data mining to targeted online advertisements and collect propitious volumes of information about individuals, often reselling this data to other vendors. Search engines such as Google or the U.S. National Security Agency collect unimaginable quantities of information about people. The public digital data about private individuals reflects the panopticonic tendencies of contemporary capitalism to monitor and control citizens’ behavior.

Education and health care have been reconfigured by cyberspace. The rise of online courses has been steady and inexorable. Libraries have changed their purpose to become repositories of digital data (Herring 2014). Health care has witnessed the rise of telemedicine, telesurgery, and e-health, in which patients can look up diseases, disorders, symptoms, drugs, and solutions (Ball and Lillis 2001).

Political and governmental impacts

The political world has been drastically transformed by the internet. Whereas journalism has been digitized, and traditional newspapers have had to adjust, social media also allows for the propagation of fake news. Blogs have become an important part of political campaigns and commentary. Internet law, or cyberlaw, is another field in which these effects are being felt, including issues like e-contracts, electronic signatures, digital intellectual proper...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Conceiving the history, technology, and geography of the internet
• Part II Political economy of the internet
• Part III The internet in everyday life
• Index