ABSTRACT
Global city regions, and the corridors between them, are being permeated with widening arrays of telecommunications grids—conventional ‘phone networks, wireless and radio systems, cable networks, satellite systems, internet, data and video networks. These silently and (usually) invisibly underpin rapidly increasing flows of voice, data, video and images across all walks of city life and development, and at all geographical scales. Indeed, every aspect of the life of our cities is now cross-cut with all manner of computerized and “tele-mediated” communication, exchanges and transactions, most of which are now based on digital principles (meaning that they are based on the streams of zeroes and ones used in computers). 1 As Geoff Mulgan once put it, “The redefinition of the city as a system for producing and switching information is highly visible.” 2
