Beschreibung:
Revolutions in technologies of exchange are regularly associated with new visions of the world, developed around certain recurring themes like general mobility, remote centrality, the dispersion of peoples and the abolition of borders. In these constructs, the speed of transports and of information transmission does away with spatial and social distance. In contrast with these egalitarian visions, other thinkers create new tools and new geographical objects in an attempt to assess the distortions introduced by the new technologies. Here the dominant themes are those of concentration and of the increase in inequality. This article describes the emergence of these two models at the dawn of the railway revolution. The next two articles go on to treat first of the world views brought about by the revolutions in electrical power and telecomputing, then of the geographical methodologies and population theories developed to take account of the effects of these new technologies.
Revolutions in technologies of exchange are regularly associated with new visions of the world, developed around certain recurring themes like general mobility, remote centrality, the dispersion of peoples and the abolition of borders. In these constructs, the speed of transports and of information transmission does away with spatial and social distance. In contrast with these egalitarian visions, other thinkers create new tools and new geographical objects in an attempt to assess the distortions introduced by the new technologies. Here the dominant themes are those of concentration and of the increase in inequality. This article describes the emergence of these two models at the dawn of the railway revolution. The next two articles go on to treat first of the world views brought about by the revolutions in electrical power and telecomputing, then of the geographical methodologies and population theories developed to take account of the effects of these new technologies.