Telecommunications and geography

the long version

In the modern world, telecommunications play a dominant role in economic and social interaction. Their unique ability to compress time and distance may seem to have undercut the importance of geography, yet paradoxically a geographical perspective is necessary to appreciate their true impact and role. In this innovative book, the first to treat telecommunications as geographical phenomena, Professor Kellerman has filled a vital gap in the literature and has produced a tour de force of integration and synthesis, bringing together a vast literature in a satisfying and stimulating framework. He examines the geography of telecommunications at four scales, the urban (or local), the regional, national and the global and demonstrates how their levels interact and vary. He begins by reviewing the history of telecommunications and the present technological capabilities, particularly the integration of the telephone, the computer and TV. He then outlines the concept and processes of telecommunications geography, explaining in detail the geographical dimensions of the topic in each of the three scales. Broad in conception, original and thought provoking in structure and rich in example and illustration, this book opens up an important new field for urban economic and human geography and will be widely read.