Mark Hepworth

The geography of technological change in the information economy

Hepworth M. (1986) The geography of technological change in the information economy, Reg. Studies 20, 407–424. Innovations in information technology are transforming urban and regional systems through their impacts on production and distribution processes. Case studies of Canadian multi-locational firms are used to examine this spatio-economic transformation in the context of the new information-based service economy. By focusing on computer networks as spatial systems of information technology, it is shown that these innovations can lead to centralized and decentralized patterns of direct production and office activity. New insights are also developed into the telecommunications-transportation trade-off and the key role of telecommunications in regional development.

Electronic spaces: new technologies and the future of cities

Abstract The probable or potential implications of information and communications technologies for social and life processes has been the subject of much debate. The influence they will have on social and life spaces, however, has not been examined to the same extent. This article undertakes such an examination, challenging the technicist approach to this issue, and urging a deeper understanding of the relation between technological developments and social and spatial processes.

Planning for the Information City: the Challenge and Response

The emergence of the information city based upon new technologies such as converging computer and telecommunications innovations may signify the onset of a new historical era, comparable with the social transformation wrought by the industrial revolution. New types of urban economy are being built around these new technologies and their applications. The paper describes the broad economic and technical aspects of the information city, goes on to consider the economic and social issues raised and evaluates some of the main policy alternatives currently being pursued by local authorities in different countries.

Information Technology as Spatial Systems

Computer networks are information technology as spatial systems. They are referred to by Daniel Bell (1973) as the transforming resource or key process innovations of the postindustrial society. These types of network systems, which are built with merging computer and telecommunications technologies, have been overlooked in geographical research. At the same time, computer network applications such as teleworking, teieshopping, telebanking and so on are widely anticipated to transform urban and regional systems (Goddard et al., 1985; Daniels, 1985). For the most part, the geography of telecommunications has remained a relatively underdeveloped and outdated area of research (Abler and Falk, 1980). According to Meier (1985,111), for example:

Information technology and the spatial dynamics of capital

Abstract This paper considers the spatial attributes of computer network technology and their implications for modelling the regional dynamics of the information economy. Attention focuses initially on the assumptions made about the locational and usage characteristics of capital in some traditional regional economic models, and then it is shown that the new information technology, as a form of ‘information capital’, requires closer scrutiny of these approaches. We emphasize the ‘communicability’ of this type of capital, specifically the capital services embodied in information flows over corporate computer networks, and its potential effects on the regional geography of enterprise and of the economy more generally. This leads us to reflect on what new considerations should enter into regional policy-making for the information economy, including the central role of advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

Book Review: Information, society and spatial structure.

chapter conflates materialism, historical materialism and actually existing socialist societies. Critique descends into cheap jibe. It would have been interesting if Bird had distinguished his pragmatism from the currently fashionable pragmatism of postmodernists such as Rorty. However, this is not achieved because of the implicit straightjacket of the book: that ideas (apart from Popper’s) can only be discussed if they have been expressed by geographers. In conclusion this is, for the most part, a well argued book. The written style does at times appear cluttered with superfluous references, a turn-off for students. The index is extraordinarily comprehensive, in fact over-comprehensive. For example, the two references to post-Fordism were merely in passim in the text. To counterbalance this the text is very well served by tables and diagrams that help to summarize and clarify sometimes complex arguments. But it is a polemic, the parameters of which do rather limit its usefulness to the general reader.

Book reviews : Aydalot, P. and Keeble, D., editors, 1988: High technology industry and innovative environments: the European experience. London: Routledge. i + 241 pp. £27.50 cloth

Somewhere in the 1970s, the capitalist economy began turning on a different axis, and (10 years later) geographers have set about drawing up a new map of the world. All sorts of new maps are being hurriedly prepared: for example, maps of the ’new’ service economy, the ’new’ information economy, and the ’new’ international financial system; then, there are ’post-’ maps of, inter alia, the postindustrial economy and the post(neo?)-Fordist economy; and, last but not least, we have the ’numbers racket’ -

Information services in the international network marketplace

Une fois definie la notion de marche des reseaux, sont analysees les etudes realisees par I.P. Sharp Associates et le London Stock Exchange et est examinee la reglementation en matiere de flux dinformation international