A sense of place | The Economist
►http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21565007-geography-matters-much-ever-despite-digital-revolution-says-patr
interactions entre #technologie #mobile, géographie locale et globale
Amazon has shifted book-buying from the high street to the computer, leaving many empty shops in its wake; now it is leading the move from the printed page to the e-reader. Mechanical Turk, a division of Amazon, offers companies “an on-demand, scalable workforce”, available around the clock, to carry out online tasks for a few cents a time. Today’s worker may leave the office physically but never digitally: he is attached to it with invisible tethers through his smartphone and his tablet. He can take part in videoconferences so realistic that he might be in the same room. Even medical examinations can be carried out online.
Geography lives
In other respects, however, reports of the “death of distance” (the title of a 1995 special report in this newspaper) have been much exaggerated. As this report will explain, many internet start-ups head for San Francisco, New York, Berlin, London or other hubs to be close to like-minded people. Talk of the “end of geography” (another phrase from the mid-1990s) is about as convincing as the “end of history” when the digital presence of different places varies so much.