Public Information Services and the Changing Role of Distance in Human Affairs

Information-based societies and economies depend on the public intercommunications services as much as industrial and commercial economies depended on transportation services. Intercommunications policy ambiguities and conflicts within the intercommunications industries will result in structural changes in intercommunications systems. Major changes in rate-making principles will accompany structural change. Such changes could, in turn, sharply alter the ways intercommunications services affect the locations of economic activities. We outline the conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches that would facilitate investigation of the ways intercommunications affect economic geography and investigation of the ways intercommunications can be incorporated into geographical theory. Mankind's growing dependence upon