Aharon Kellerman

Mobile broadband services and the availability of instant access to cyberspace

Recent developments and innovations in ICTs (information and communications technologies) and their wide and growing adoption have changed the status of cyberspace vis-à-vis physical space, as well as that of users of information and communications devices. The most important change concerning cyberspace has been its permanent and instant availability to users through broadband services, bringing about its integration with physical space, at least from the perspective of users. I attempt to highlight this change, its significance, and its potential implications. A short review of the literature on cyberspace as a spatial entity is followed by a presentation of the growing adoption of various mobile technologies for users of the Internet, and the rapidly growing mobile broadband traffic, notably of streaming information, coupled with extended mobile Internet uses, mainly for entertainment. These discussions will lead us to the suggestion of several implications of instantly accessed cyberspace by mobile broadband users—access which is available without location and time restrictions.

Agricultural location theory 1: basic models

Agricultural location theory deals with both the location — allocation process of land uses by farmers, and the spatial organization of agricultural land uses. The major term in its classical versions is economic rent relating to some form of surplus. Ricardos theory emphasized the physical qualities of land and urban demand as major determinants in rent production. Von Thünens theory emphasized distance from farm to market as well as transport costs, yield, market prices, and production costs as rent determinants. Modern versions of the theory provided simple models which relate explicitly to transportation costs. The theory has been criticized mainly for its many limiting assumptions.

Internet access and penetration: An international urban comparison

IT has been shown elsewhere that the Internet presents an urban geography of its own, composed of varying locations for the phases of information handling: production, transmission, and consumption. Of these, access to the Internet and its consumption address two important questions when viewed from the urban perspective: how much is the Internet accessed by urbanites in different cities, and to what degree has it penetrated into urban households. These two aspects of Internet diffusion—access and penetration—may shed some light on differences among cities, both within countries and among them. They may further illuminate the very dissemination of the Internet as a multipurpose system, beyond its business and academic uses at work and school, i.e., its use for entertainment, information finding, e-shopping, home-banking, and a wide variety of other domestic applications. Access and penetration of the Internet at the urban scale is of special importance, in that cities serve as the social arena for local connectivity. It has also been argued that urbanites who have been well-connected locally before their introduction to the Internet may bring about higher levels of connectivity at all geographical spheres through the Internet. High levels of penetration, or rising demand, may further indicate the prospects for the development of Web sites and information services of diverse types or supply, serving all members of households, adults and children alike. Unfortunately, the study of Kellerman 2002

Economic and Spatial Aspects of von Thünen's Factor Intensity Theory

Von Thünens intensity theory, or the formulation of optimum intensity of land uses, has been proposed for several economic conditions using classical, neoclassical, and general approaches. The theory may also be presented through the development of intensity curves, producing the missing spatial element of the theory. The several possible forms of the intensity curve have different relations with von Thünens crop-theory rent curves, thus producing spatially expanding or shrinking isolated states.

Where Does It Happen? The Location of the Production and Consumption of Web Information

Marketing and urban geography notions, such as “service areas,” “catchment areas,” “influence areas,” “central place hierarchy,” and the like, explaining the relationship of the location of customers to stores and service providers, disappeared with the instantaneous, distance-free access to electronic information from anywhere to anywhere. In principle, the untethering from location should have been true not only for information consumption, but also for information production, which is, indeed, the case with e-mail, the production of information on a personal level. However, it is questionable whether global electronic information in the form of Web sites of various kinds, notably commercial Web sites, is also produced in a completely location-independen t pattern. Furthermore, if the production of commercial electronic information is more concentrated, the question arises whether there is any relationship between the location factors of the production of Web information, on the one hand, and the type or content of information produced in given centers of information production, on the other. And, to put supply back in line with demand, one may also ask whether a local specialization in information production also brings about a dominance in information consumption in that place.

The suburbanization of retail trade: a U.S. nationwide view☆

Abstract The Censuses of Business 1958, 1963 and 1967 and the Censuses of Retail Trade 1972 and 1977 provide data on retail sales in CBDs and major retail centers (MRCs) of SMSAs. Through this period sales in MRCs increased while CBDs lost, reflecting the decline in the population and income of central cities. However, MRCs grew faster until 1963 compared to the late sixties and seventies, due to the rapid diffusion of MRCs all over the country in the early sixties. Retail sales in CBDs continued to decline through the seventies. The trends of increase in MRC retail sales reflect several stages of suburbanization of population, and an increase in the ‘doughnut effect’.

Improvement of a solid waste collection system: the case of Givatayim, Israel*

The increasing quantities of solid waste and the high costs of its collection call for modifications of the collection routes in urban areas, in order to reduce the number of collecting teams and the distances travelled by them. Several mathematical models, aiming at the optimization of route length, are examined in this paper. It is suggested that the solutions derived from these models are only partial and that they cannot fully handle some of the constraints which the collection routing problem involves. The preferred method, therefore, is the heuristic model which is based on manual analysis of the routes system using a set of specified rules. This method is, then, used for an analysis and modification of the waste collection routes of Givatayim, Israel. Implementation of the proposed routes may save the town one out of six collection teams and would reduce the total distance travelled by some 18.7 per cent.

Settlement Myth and Settlement Activity: Interrelationships in the Zionist Land of Israel

Settlement frontiers may bring about the production of political settlement myths leading future settlers to frontier settlements. Such myths may develop through three phases of geographical interpretation: (i) the realization or consumption of previous myths, (ii) ideological loading of the landscape and (iii) the emergence of mythical space. These phases, notably the latter, are expressed in various outlets of the collective memory and civil religion. Zionist political settlement myths may be interpreted as dealing with environmental struggles, social development and security. These myths are interrelated with several chains of local or regional settlement processes and events: produced myth comes to be consumed by later settlers. But the creation of such myths emanates from the urban cores of Jaffa, Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.

The internet as second action space

Part I: The Internet as a Platform For Action Space 1. The Internet as Second Space 2. Theoretical Perspectives on the Internet as Second Action Space 3. Internet Operations Part II: Human Needs and the Internet 4. Human Basic Needs and Their Provision 5. Curiosity and its Satiation 6. Personal Identity Part III: The Internet As An Action Space For Individuals 7. Daily Activities 8. Social Networking 9. Darker Actions over the Internet 10. Conclusion

Cyberspace Classification and Cognition: Information and Communications Cyberspaces

THE notions cognitive space and cognitive/mental maps were proposed in the late 1940s, and have been extensively studied since the 1970s within behavioral geography, as well as within tangent disciplines, notably environmental psychology and architecture. Viewing these notions from the perspective of the 2000s, one can state that the hidden assumption, or ontology, for space, on which these notions were based, was that space constitutes a personally experienced, real, material entity. The massive introduction and adoption of information technology for personal uses as of the 1980s brought about a wide exposure of individuals to a virtual and immaterial space: cyberspace. Virtual space has been constantly experienced by users of the Internet, as well as by individuals communicating through fixed and mobile telephones. The objective of this article is to examine cognitive cyberspace, suggesting its classification into two classes—cognitive information cyberspace (CIC) and cognitive communications cyberspace (CCC)—based on an equivalent classification of cyberspace into information [cyber]space (IC) and communications [cyber]space (CC). Of these two latter classes of cyberspace, communications cyberspace (CC), which is proposed in this article, will receive special attention, through its comparison to information cyberspace (IC).