Today, roughly 2 billion people use the internet, and its applications
have flourished in number and importance. This volume will examine the
growth and geography of the internet from a political economy
perspective. Its central motivation is to illustrate that cyberspace
does not exist in some aspatial void, but is deeply rooted in national
and local political and cultural contexts. Toward that end, it will
invoke a few major theorists of cyberspace, but apply their perspectives
in terms that are accessible to readers with no familiarity with them.
Beyond summaries of the infrastructure that makes the internet possible
and global distributions of users, it delves into issues such as the
digital divide to emphasize the inequalities that accompany the growth
of cyberspace. It also addresses internet censorship, e-commerce, and
e-government, issues that have received remarkably little scholarly
attention, particularly from a spatial perspective. Throughout, it
demonstrates that in cyberspace, place matters, so that no comprehensive
understanding of the internet can be achieved without considering how it
is embedded within, and in turn changes, local institutional and
political contexts. Thus the book rebuts simplistic "death of distance"
views or those that assert there is, or can be, a "one-size-fits-all,
cookie-cutter" model of the internet applicable to all times and places.