ABSTRACT
At first it may be difficult to understand why geographers should be concerned about the ethics of the Internet. Unlike spatial technologies such as GIS or digital cartography, geographers did not invent the Internet, nor do they necessarily have a privileged relationship to it. But this is the Age of Information and one of its major means of transmission is the Internet. There is a remarkable geography of the Internet which has three complementary components. First, “where” is the Internet, and more generally, cyberspace? How did it grow? Can the flows of information be mapped to see who is connected and where? What geographic outcomes or practices might it give rise to in finance, politics, or culture? This is here called the geography of virtuality. Second, to what degree do these virtual spaces constitute new forms of spatial knowledge? Do they change the way we know the world and the way we think about other people and communities? If so, what are the ethical implications for geographers? This is here called the virtuality of geography-the fact that geographic interactions increasingly require or include a virtual component.1
