ABSTRACT
Although there are close conceptual links between telecommunications and other forms of infrastructure, the relationship between electronic flows along telecommunications networks and the physical flows of people, goods and services along water, energy and transport networks are not necessarily symmetrical. The linkages between electronic and physical flows are extremely complex. Although much of the Utopian and futurist literature focuses upon the potential for substituting electronic for physical flows, we have already shown in Chapter 6 that this perspective fails to grasp the dynamic and contradictory nature of the relations.
