ABSTRACT
This chapter reinforces the old message in its empirical part and then discusses the policy implications of the associated spatially-distributed social capital of the networked traveller in the network society. One of the best known sociologists of social networks, Barry Wellman, has recently admitted that there is very little literature on the spatial distribution of the members of social networks: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that systematically examines the role of distance in social networks in an era after the advent of cars, phones and planes but before the coming of the Internet. This chapter benefited from the hospitality of the Technion, Haifa and its staff during the first author's stay as a Lady Day Visiting professor during the spring of 2007. Some of the ideas were discussed during a Department of Geography seminar at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
