ABSTRACT

Geography – the study of how human beings are stretched across and utilize the surface of the Earth – inevitably involves some account of how people communicate with one another. All social processes necessitate communications in one form or another, including flows of ideas, data and information through space and time. As P. Hugill demonstrated, communication systems have been deeply interwoven with global and local geopolitics for more than a century and a half. Alexander Bell’s invention of the telephone in 1876, telecommunications were synonymous with telephone services. The microelectronics revolution of the late twentieth century was particularly important for the telecommunications industry, which is arguably the most rapidly expanding and dynamic industrial sector. As data were converted from analogue to digital form, computer services merged with telecommunications. Exponential increases in the ability of computerized systems to analyse and transmit data were crucial to post-Fordist ‘digital capitalism’.