情報化社会とサイバースペースの地理学 : 研究動向と可能性

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Since the middle of the 1990s, the rapid diffusion of the Internet into society has driven various social transformations. A number of geographical studies with diverse approaches on the impacts of information technologies (IT), including the Internet, have been carried out in Western countries, although Japanese geographers have produced few studies. This paper provides an overview of research trends in this field among Western geographers in the latter part of the 1990s and early 2000s. A framework proposed by Dodge and Kitchin is employed. In this framework, geographical aspects of IT are broadly divided into two categories: the impacts of IT on real economies and societies (called geographies of information society) and the geographical characteristics of virtual space emerging in computers and information networks (called geographies of cyberspace). Using this framework, studies analyzing the geographies of information society are reviewed first, and then studies discussing geographies of cyberspace are considered. Finally, a research strategy for Japanese geographers in this field is proposed.While almost all studies on the impacts of IT on real economies and societies discuss the technical possibilities or the economic benefits of IT usage up to the first half of the 1990s, geographers increasingly have paid attention to the social and political consequences of the penetration of IT. A clear trend from a techno-economic view to a socio-political view is observed. Within this trend, eight issues are discussed: 1) industrial location in the IT age, 2) new urban IT-industrial clusters, 3) growth strategies of peripheral areas using IT, 4) emergence of e-commerce, 5) IT and the city, 6) the digital divide, 7) electronic surveillance, 8) political impacts of the Internet.The first studies by geographers on the characteristics of virtual space emerged around 1997. Several new analytical concepts, e. g. Adams virtual place and Battys virtual geography, were proposed. Many cultural geographers became interested in the socio-cultural aspects of the virtual world as argued by Kitchin, who first proposed the concept of geographies of cyberspace. A research approach of spatial analysis of cyberspace, by which the virtual locations and spatial structure of cyberspace are analyzed applying traditional methods of spatial analysis, was also proposed. The spatial characteristics of various media of cyberspace, e. g. e-mail, chat rooms and multiple user domains (MUDs), were analyzed and methods for mapping cyberspace were developed under this approach.From the review of studies in this field, two major trends are identified. One is the growing attention to the social, political and cultural aspects of ITs impacts in either the real or virtual worlds. Another trend is the wide acceptance of the concepts of cyberspace or virtual space by geographers. This acceptance may reflect the rapid penetration of these concepts into both general and academic society.Two current research areas are identified to activate Japanese geographers work in this field. First, close examination of new, advanced IT usage in Japan, e. g., e-commerce and mobile phones, is required. These studies will open the possibility for a new model of information society suitable to Japan as well as other Asian countries. Second, the introduction of the socio-cultural approach accepted among Western geographers is effective. The positive participation of social geographers and cultural geographers is expected.
人文地理学会の論文

情報化社会とサイバースペースの地理学 : 研究動向と可能性

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