The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptualizing space, place and information technology

Abstract

This article critically explores how the relations between information technologies and space and place are being conceptualized in a broad swathe of recent writings and discourses on the geographies of ‘cyberspace’ and information technologies. After analysing the powerful role of spatial and territorial metaphors in anchoring current discourses about information technologies and society, the article goes on to identify three broad, dominating perspectives. These I label the perspective of ‘substitution and transcendence’ (dominated by technological Utopianists), the ‘co-evolution’ perspective (drawing from political economy and cultural studies) and the ‘recombination’ perspective (derived from recent work in actor-network theory). The discussion turns to each in turn, extracting the geographical dimensions and implications of each. The article concludes by considering the implications of the discussion for spatial treatments of societytechnology relations and for broader debates about the nature of space and place.