The geographies of the internet

Zook, Matthew

doi:10.1002/aris.1440400109

Cited by 55 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 116 publications

(122 reference statements)

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Section: The Geography Of Data Centressupporting

confidence: 69%

“…Urban high-tech and information technology firms and residents benefit from the use of data centres, utilizing technological networks and data centres located in the 'hinterland' with little or no benefit to rural municipalities (Glanz 2013). This geography complements the work by other scholars to understand the geography of domain name registrations during the dot-com era that demonstrated that registrations were not only dominated by Silicon Valley, but also concentrated in large urban areas (Zook 2000;Zook 2007).Understanding the economic geography of labour and digital infrastructures, as shown in our analysis, helps to position the arguments about the uneven socio-environmental impacts of planetary urbanization under cognitive-cultural capitalism. Key to this understanding is how agglomerations of digital labourers -that is workers in high-tech and software industries which produce digital technologies that leverage digital ICTs -concentrate in urban areas.…”

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confidence: 69%

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Roos¹,

Kostakis²,

Giotitsas³

2016

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Today, two great signs of change are occurring. On the one hand, the capitalist world economy is putting tremendous pressure on the earth's biosphere and bringing an onslaught of destruction to immediate environments and vulnerable people worldwide. On the other hand, the rise of new and progressive social-economic foundations is the result of an unprecedented increase of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Therefore it is arguably more crucial than ever to understand how social, economic and ecological foundations of the internet and ICT infrastructures are interwoven. What are we-as scholars, activists and citizens-to make of ICTs that seem to emerge from an economic and social system based upon ecological destruction and social oppression, while at the same time engaging millions of people in the proliferation of information, knowledge and active democratic collaboration? This special issue investigates how we can begin to understand this problem, and how we can hope to balance the perils and promises of ICTs in order to make way for a just and sustainable paradigm.Keywords: Commons based peer production, peer-to-peer, political ecology, ICTs, materiality, immateriality, transition, sustainability, digital commons.Recent studies by Christian Fuchs have examined the complex web of production relations and the new division of digital labour that makes possible the vast and cheap ICT infrastructure as we know it (Fuchs 2013;. The analysis partly reveals that ICT products and infrastructure embody slave-like conditions that perpetually force mine and assembly workers into positions of dependency. Expanding this argument, the WWF has reported (Reed and Miranda 2007) that mining in the Congo basin poses considerable threats to the local environment in the form of pollution, loss of biodiversity, and an increased presence of businessas-usual made possible by roads and railways. This research highlights that ICTs are inherently material, as opposed to purely cognitive or code based, because the ICT infrastructure under the given economic structure embodies slave-like working conditions, various class relations and undesirable ecological consequences (see also Humphrey 2001). Thus, the position that views the emerging digital economy as purely immaterial is challenged.At the same time, the emerging digital commons provide a new and promising platform for social developments, arguably enabled by the progressive dynamics of ICT development. These are predominantly manifested within commons-based peer production, i.e., a new mode of collaborative, social production ; and grassroots desktop manufacturing or community-driven makerspaces, i.e. forms of bottom-up, distributed manufacturing. The most well-known examples of commons-based peer production are the free/open source software projects and the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia. While these novel forms of social organisation are immanent in capitalism, they also present the potential to challenge the dominant capitalist system of production and ev...

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Section: The Geography Of Data Centressupporting

confidence: 69%

supporting

confidence: 69%

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Roos¹,

Kostakis²,

Giotitsas³

2016

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“…Balk and Yetman ( 2004 ) provide relatively large-scale data for population estimations but do not include speaker estimates. Moreover, Internet use is spatially variant (Billón et al 2008 ;Zook 2005 ) where large-scale Internet population estimates are not readily available.…”

Section: Social Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Geographic Nature of Wikipedia Authorship

Hardy

2012

Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge

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The ef fi cacy and use of volunteered geographic information (VGI) is an active research area, but the geography of VGI authorship is largely unknown. Wikipedia is an online collaborative encyclopedia where anyone can edit articles, including those about place. Moreover, Wikipedia's editorial transparency facilitates in situ observations of collective authorship. The empirical study described in this chapter collects 32 million contributions to Wikipedia's geographic articles over 7 years. It fi nds exponential decay in the spatial patterns of Wikipedia's authorship processes, which is consistent with other sociospatial phenomena, like innovation diffusion. As global information infrastructures continue to reduce communication and coordination costs, this study may provide insight into whether geographic distance ultimately matters in information peer production. This chapter begins by discussing core concepts behind collective authorship; then provides an overview of Wikipedia, its contributors, and their production processes; discusses the results and implications from spatial modeling of geotagged Wikipedia article contributions; and concludes with future research issues.

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“…Do ICT support existing territorial disparities or create new ones? These questions make sense only if we accept a link between the spatial organization and the ICT diffusion despite the low visibility of ICT networks (Zook 2005;Zook et al 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The diffusion of ICT in France: infrastructures, services, and uses

Houzet

2007

GeoJournal

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How does the organization of space interfere in the numerical development of territories? Our hypothesis is that information and communication technologies (ICT) are organized by taking into account the existing spatial structures, compared to constraints of distance, spatial position and urban hierarchy. In the context of the liberalization of the sector of telecommunications, ICT spread according to an economic logic of profitability. The concern of network operators collides with the principle of territorial equity in planning policies. To understand the diffusion of ICT in France, a cartographic analysis of their distribution is proposed. It derives from the notion of networks at three levels: infrastructures, services and uses. The research takes into account the difference between regional configurations to identify the spatial factors of the digital divide. For each level, the diffusion of ICT follows a different logic, and characterizes territories with different orientations. Areas with a high density of population and activities are quickly equipped. The democratization of the use of the Internet, notably with the diffusion of public access to the Internet, is present to a greater degree in low-density areas.

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The geographies of the internet

Cited by 55 publications

References 116 publications

Download the Entire Special Section Here

Download the Entire Special Section Here

The Geographic Nature of Wikipedia Authorship

The diffusion of ICT in France: infrastructures, services, and uses

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