Geography and the Internet
What is it?
Geography is many things. It encompasses economies, populations, mountains and the odd rock. The area of the subject that I study is primarily interested in spatial relationships and economics. You could be forgiven for imagining the subject to be quite different to that of computing and the Internet. (And you may be right: most of my classmates can't even Σ in Excel.)
One thing geography is not turns out to be colouring in. Southampton Univeristy Geography Society happen to be sponsored by Crayloa, but Geography at the LSE is more analytical, economic and policy based than those good old colour-by-numbers that were A Levels.
And the Internet?
As part of my degree I read a lot about spatial relationships. These are the relationships between people, people and firms, and firms themselves over space.
Understanding these relationships is fundamental to the Internet. An Oxbridge professor asked if the Internet had made the world aspatial, and whilst I was tempted to disagree, the web has changed the rules of how we think about spatial interactions.
Economically communities are closer together, communication is easier and ever increasing globalisation has been the result.
The relevance of economic geography to the Internet is, therefore, unrivalled. Having had such a profound impact on society and development, the Internet continues to change industries: from communication to marketing, childrens toys to television.
Including and understanding spatial and economic geographies uniquely places a website in the increasingly competitve Internet. Whether it be targetting special offers and deals on the geolocation of a user or measuring online human interactions in terms of the physical distance that they cover to learn about a user's relationships, geography is set to revolutionise the web.
