The Networked Species.pdf

Markets, Globalization & Development Review, 2019

Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, 2015

This article examines whether communication at a distance and travel to meet in person compete with or complement each other in the case of travel to meet immigrants' relatives and whether and to what extent each of the diverse "technology encounters" plays a different role in this regard. Drawing upon two bodies of knowledge, travel and tourism and social networks literatures, an empirical specification that explains the frequency of travel to meets immigrants relatives is specified. Based on a sample of 300 Israeli respondents, this equation is estimated simultaneously with the occurrences of their relatives' visits to Israel, while accounting for the endogeneity of strength of social ties, frequency of contact via communication technologies (CT), and choice of CT platforms. The study shows that increased frequency of maintaining communication at a distance is associated with increased travel frequency, but the choice of the CT medium matters; heavy use of some CTs corresponds with more frequent travel to meet in person in comparison to heavy reliance on other CTs. Keywords Communication technologies • Social networks • Travel • Immigration JEL Classification D12 • F60 • J60 in the total world population increasing from 2.9 to 3.1 % over the last decade (United Nations 2009). In China, for example, this phenomenon is striking, with 45 million "overseas Chinese" residing in countries around the globe (Tan 2013). This trend has resulted in the social networks of many countries being reshaped into systems where connections are spatially dispersed. Since mutually beneficial relationships among relatives are considered 'relationship capital' in the sociological literature (Dollahite and Rommel 1993; McCann et al. 2010), the spatial separation of people from their family and friends (hereafter FF) in the home country represents a significant cost of international migration. Consequently, travel to visit immigrants' friends and relatives has grown significantly; in the UK, for example, in 1996 this segment accounted for 19 % of all visits, while in 2006 this figure grew to 29 % (Travel Trends, 2006). In Australia, by 2009 it reached 32-38 % of all visits (Tourism Research Australia, 2010), and in Sweden it is thought that about one-half of all travel stems from meeting with friends and family (O'Dell 2004). Increased mobility has been of a bidirectional nature, and includes both people traveling to meet their FF who have immigrated to other countries and immigrants travelling to visit their FF in the homeland. This mobility has been facilitated by technological advances in means of transportation and infrastructure, which have resulted in a hyper-mobile society. The number of automobiles registered and operated worldwide surpassed the one-billion-unit mark in 2010 for the first time (Ward 2011) and the number of commercial air travelers increased from 1.9 billion passengers in 2004 to three billion in 2013 (World Bank 2013) (sustained by the liberalization of the airline industry and the introduction of the low-cost model). In isolation, these facts could lead one to assume that the growth rate of this kind of travel is keeping up with the growth of immigration. However, another process has been taking place concurrently, namely, the massive development of communication technologies (CT), which has led to a significant increase in the range of interactional devices individuals may use. This development includes the introduction of cellular phones, and an ever-growing number of personal computer and smartphone applications for instant messaging, video calls, social networks, and other types of communication (known as the "app revolution"). There are currently two billion internet users and 1.2 billion personal computers in use worldwide, including desktops, laptops, and tablet PCs such as the iPad. However, the most staggering fact is probably that approximately three quarters of the world's inhabitants, i.e., 5.2 billion people, now have access to a mobile phone (World Bank 2012). This abundance of technology raises an interesting question: while it is clear that communication at a distance and travel to meet one's 'significant others' are used to sustain and strengthen social networks, the nature of substitution or complementarity between the two is not clear. This question has been addressed in the context of research on social networks and transportation studies. For example, Putnam (2001) found that the rate of face-to-face conversations within the United States is on the decline, and claims that living life 'on a screen' is not a satisfactory substitute for good conversation, produces poor social interaction, and weakens social capital. However, he agrees that CT development leads to new ways of managing close relationships, since the choice of one CT medium over another produces and reproduces the social

The world wide web is a shared commonality connecting people and organizations globally with instantaneous information. The results enable people to share, exchange, display, learn and otherwise communicate from a variety of media devices with emails, texting, audio and video.

2009

Since the late 1990s the word'network'has become a buzzword, which is being used to add interest, even when the context is divorced from the technical meaning of the term: a set of entities linked by identifiable bonds, eg intersections by roads, airports by scheduled flights, telephone exchanges by cables, persons by common descent, joint activity or a common history.

Journal of Macromarketing, 2018

2010

Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 1992

Communication and information computer networks connect the world in ways that make globalization more natural and inequity more subtle. As educators, we look at these phenomena holistically analyzing them from the realist 's view, thus exploring tensions, (in)

Infrastructure is the operating system of modern economies, offering performing platforms and a multitude of services to deliver essential functions. Institutions and networks for transportation, energy and communications have evolved interdependently, facilitating economic and societal development and should be understood and developed as one converging infracultural system. Thus public and private infrastructure investments can be considered as transaction costs immanent to any society, connecting flows of social, economic and environmental capital, decreasing with access to efficient infrastructure systems. As an historic analysis shows, effective institutions are needed for the perpetual transformation of the infrastructural foundations for economic and non-economic socio-cultural functions. The infracultural meta-function being, to enable the accumulation of wealth, support social stability and ensure a sustainable quality of life, the allocation and provisioning of infrastructural services and the conditions for access may require a rethinking of specific governance schemes. Regarding the challenges and synergies offered by digitalization the role of private and public actors has to be reconsidered. Facing the digital perspective that will transform infrastructure users into prosumers, the rights of customers and citizens should be reconsidered, depending on socioeconomic factors, including non-economic values and belief systems.