The Sacred, The Regional, The Digital

American Geographical Society
The Sacred, the Regional, and the Digital

Author(s): Paul F. Starrs
Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 87, No. 2, Cyberspace and Geographical Space (Apr.,
1997), pp. 193-218
Published by: American Geographical Society
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THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL*

PAUL F. STARRS
ABSTRACT. As an information economy and a cultural hallmark, cyberspace belies traditional boundaries yet involves a distinctive territory, citizenry, literature, technology, capital
and finance, ritual, weapons and belligerencies, a recognizable past, and variegated if unspecified futures. Not easily quantified is the geography of so elusive and placeless an entity,
and its technology has been variously portrayed as utopian, liberating, elitist, or enslaving; in
it are brought to life strains of technological determinism. Maps of cyberspace can be forged
only with utmost difficulty, and it is best beloved and imagined in dense cyberpunk fiction.
Part sacred space, part ethereal region, part digital fact, cyberspace involves a regional geography perhaps best captured in a koan: What is the place where everyone is but nobody lives?
Keywords: cyberspace, geosophy, Internet, networks, regionalism.
There is a line among thefragments of the GreekpoetArchilochus which says:
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." ...
[T]he words mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and
thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great
chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vi-
sion, one system more or less coherent or articulate... and on the other side
those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory....
[T]hese last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal
rather than centripetal. Thefirst kind of intellectual and artistic personality
belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to thefoxes.
-Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers, 1953
Once upon a time, in truth not long ago at all, there was a French bishop whose
name was Jacques Gaillot. In January 1995 the bishop's prosperous diocese had its see
in lvreux, a genially rustic corner of Normandy, close by Chartres. The bishop, quite
to the satisfaction of his rural diocesans, saw himself as a champion of the poor and
downtrodden of Paris, as well might a good Catholic cleric who regarded wearing the
miter as a holy charge rather than a divine privilege.

But this bishop's activism was brought to the attention of a restive Vatican, which
in no small degree grew concerned, likely (and rightly) foreseeing problems in the
forced ecclesiastical interaction of a celebrated French cleric and a plenipotentiary
Polish pope. So it was that the bishop received a summons to Rome. After conferring
there with Pope John Paul II, he was summarily shipped back to France while a dis-
position was being reached. On 12 January 1995 the bishop was removed from his
post: "I had met the dead line," p&re Gaillot wrote in a pastoral letter. "I was told that
my function as bishop had come to an end and that the See of ]vreux will be declared
vacant from the following day midday onwards" (Gaillot 1995).
* Contributions from Lynn Huntsinger and Julie Anderson were crucial to the evolution of this essay.
*fA DR. STARRS is an associate professor of geography at the University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada
89557-0048.
The Geographical Review 87 (z): 193-218, April 1997
Copyright ? 1997 by the American Geographical Society of New York
194
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
PORTUGAL O ,
'- Mediterranean j
Sea
Algiers
tic Tangiers| Oran _
FIG. 1-Partenia, in modern-day Algeria. Sources: [http://www.partenia.fr]; base map: Mountain

High Maps.
The problem with this papal action is that even in a generously endowed Church
hierarchy there is no room for spare bishops to be knocking around. And it bears
recollecting that in the larger scheme of things a Catholic bishop is, when all is said
and done, considered a divinely consecrated representative of the Almighty. The

quandary became, then, who would rid Rome of this troublesome bishop? But, as
Adam Gopnik phrased it, "one of those minds that have kept the Catholic Church in
business for two thousand years had an inspiration: Why not send Jacques Gaillot to
Partenia?" (Gopnik 1996, 60) And that, precisely, is what they did (Figure i).
Even Francophiles could be excused for giving voice to an exasperated,

"Where??" For Partenia, not to put too fine an edge on it, currently lies underneath
about 1oo meters of sand near the edge of the Great Western Erg in northern Algeria.
It has not been a real place, or, perhaps better said, an inhabited or habitable one,
since about the eighth century A.D., when the Maghreb reached the Atlantic Ocean.
In a twist of delectable elegance, the Vatican had appointed the good Bishop vescovo
titulare, head of a titular see (Figure 2). As of mid-1996 his diocese lacked a single liv-
ing follower but was extant because, whereas dunes and camels come and go, a Divine Power can afford to wait through mere centuries until humans may manage to
reclaim a chunk of desert. Meanwhile, the need for someone to minister for souls
past and potential is presumed to continue unimpeded and intact. At hand was a supreme revenge, the execution of smoothly realized Vatican passive aggression and a
THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL
195
BULA CASA PON IAi A
S-, . Rev,-.-)ornsi .r.*......-J...q.. .GA - ..-- ---O-
?j,c:.it<,'o'....o_ . t.... a,,,e:. .at.. ..?..... ...... ........-~..... .....

(at a- torS ne d ll<t4Odienza -private: potrA presentare la
O^ o ^ s . . . . . .. s, i . =...... . A .. ,. -.... .- . . . ............-.-........-,.
(+i Dtno..^ti^ . ......-...
(-+ Mno 9nduzif , PtrX ftto)
^^3^?,?^M? 34 ZlbC w4 w4CEfY4W* if^ffS/qSW0 W %O WA a H^1
Xi6fr Af-,A
.tt? d; t w/?^(^tf/^<<?/?^?.^* s6^(e /6f^y? g ^9 S?w*.
FIG. 2-The entire subject of Jacques Gaillot's appointment as vescovo titulare

of Partenia has been dealt with in a most ginger fashion by the Vatican, although
official documents confirm the appointment. Source: Prefettura della casa
Pontificia 1995.
tactic tested through time and never before found wanting-the seconding of a trou-
blesome senior cleric to what in effect amounted to an ecclesiastical nonplace.

There is, in all of this, a certain sumptuous symmetry: Bishop Gaillot was a thorn
in the Vatican's side precisely because he had publicly proclaimed-before live televi-
sion cameras, no less-that the French Catholic Church should quit stonewalling on
issues of injustice, economic disadvantage, and the homeless of Paris. The Church's
response, in cranking up a resplendent and redoubtable medieval apparatus, was to
name the bishop head of what Leo Scheer quickly came to describe as "a virtual diocese" (Scheer 1996, 2).
196
E;:
itiK
K,
Hallex
I| a ? . \
FIG. 3-The splash screen of [http://www.partenia.org] captures the bishop's multilingual, eclectic
flock. Source: Gaillot 1997.
Through all this maneuvering one Leo Scheer is in no way incidental: Ami and
colleague of postmodernist archdruid Jean Beaudrillard, author of La democratie
virtuelle (1994), and a cyberspace metaphysician, Scheer was a forthright admirer of
Bishop Gaillot and a critic of religious authoritarianism. In an essay echoing closely
the phrasing, cadence, and sensibility of Henry Adams's 1918 meditation on "The
Dynamo and the Virgin," Scheer wrote, "The Church is facing huge difficulties to
adapt to our world of communication and to its new relations of force" (Adams 1942;
Scheer 1996). In the matter of Bishop Gaillot, what Scheer did was simple and direct:
in January 1996 he put the bishop on-line with a Partenia Web site, [http://www
.partenia.org] (Gaillot 1996).' Although there might be no living patron resident

within the geographical confines of Partenia, on the World Wide Web Partenia had
become a virtual diocese, with Gaillot ministering to any and all who tapped the hy-
pertext link (Figure 3).2

197
The geography of this transubstantiation-with effects on communications

technology, cyberspace, technology's power to drive change, and far-from-subtle
implications for religion-is notable. As Scheer parsed the matter, "Instead of a
metaphysical idea of a bishop, attached to a real place, we would have a metaphysical
idea of a place, attached to a real bishop." In Scheer's words, "The mind of God is imitated by the virtual structure of the Internet, where the difference between physical
actuality and real existence has at last been breached" (Scheer 1996). The teleology
may be uncertain, but the message is without doubt.
Striking contrasts of style remain between Bishop Gaillot's simple Roman-collar
Web presence and the formidable official Web site of the Vatican [http://www
.vatican.va]. The bishop's easygoing, counterhegemonic Web site is a conspicuous
upstart, and for all the attention lavished, its presentation is simple, attainable, and
readily imitable. The Vatican site is entirely in another league, a masterpiece of what
David Siegel has called "the art of third-generation site design" (1996, 26). The Vatican site's discussion of the affairs of Partenia and Jacques Gaillot is exactly nil. You
can't be much more hegemonic than that (Warf and Grimes 1997).
Surely "God," if you happen to subscribe to such a notion, can be ascribed more
than a few trappings of cyberspace-trafficking in mysterious ways; operating at

highly variable bandwidths; remaining nearly impossible for most to see; posting
rules and engaging in operations that remain more than a little Delphic; vast in reach
but evanescent in form; evolving quickly, in many guises, in sundry places, with each
claiming the True Faith; administered on earth by an exotic priesthood of acolytes;

difficult to map or locate, and essentially elusive. And finally, neither God nor cyber-
space is always given to answering when called upon.

In a metaphysical sense, no small stretching may be required to accept the full
implications of Partenia's modern story of virtual reincarnation. But a larger meaning is plain. When the Internet is drawn into the higher debates of theology, let no
one doubt that cyberspace, perhaps like God, has become greater than the sum of its
parts. Whether it has evolved into an actual place is a rather different matter, but
hardly irrelevant to geographers (Tuan 1977; Entrikin 1991).
A METAGEOGRAPHY OF CYBERSPACE
"The terrae incognitae of the periphery contain fertile ground awaiting cultivation
with the tools and in the spirit of the humanities," wrote John Kirtland Wright fifty
years ago, in arguing for geography as a confrere of the humanities (Wright 1947,15).
Wright's keynote, from a central figure in the American Geographical Society making
a presidential address to the Association of American Geographers, was a suggestion

that geography turn away from the replicable and testable fare of the physical sciences.
As the alternative for at least a talented few Wright offered geosophy, to mean literally
"earth knowledge" (p. 12). It was to take a special form-"In the periphery that lies
outside the core area of scientific geography," he noted, "there are alluring terrae in-
cognitae. If we ourselves do not personally feel equipped to conduct excursions into

them, should we exclude them from the scope of our sympathies?" (p. 14).
198
William Gibson, the godfather of cyberpunk science fiction whose clever and visionary accounts chart the intersections of technology, studies of the body, twentyfirst-century urban pop culture, and future worlds, was an upstart among the authors
who grappled with "the Matrix": "towers and fields of [data that] ranged in the color-
less non-space of the simulation matrix, the electronic consensus-hallucination that

facilitates the handling and exchanges of massive quantities of data" (Gibson 1986b,
170). Undertakings like Apple Computer's Project X [http://hotsauce.apple.com]

imitate the structure in Gibson's novels, but far more ambitious attempts to formulate virtual reality are in the offing.
Five decades after Wright's declaration of faith, cyberspace is one realm where
geographers ought to bestir themselves to consider how information has become

tantamount to space and is in the process of becoming an actual place. There are not
many such opportunities, and we ignore them at our own peril. The world of information technology, through its lively vessel, cyberspace, represents more than a con-
tributor to studies in the world and regional economy. Cyberspace is assuredly a

region-but oddly so, and a troubling and ill-mannered one. Can something fundamentally electromagnetic, where "electricity runs with intelligence," constitute a
landscape? (Benedikt 1991, 2).

If Gibson is a kind of gray-countenanced Dostoevsky of the Internet, virulent in
his cautions and captious in his voice, there are others who have broadcast a heightened sense of what the impinging cyberworld is like. In Snow Crash, certainly the
most idea-rich cyberpunk novel yet written, Neal Stephenson conjures an unsurpassed sense of dystopian changes afoot in the world, and his writings are preeminently geographical-perhaps not surprisingly, because his undergraduate degree
from Boston University is in geography. Stephenson traffics in the near-world of
"Burbclaves"-suburban enclaves-where the gated community has been carried to
an extreme, where FOQNES (Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities: Mr. Lee's

Greater Hong Kong, New South Africa, Caymans Plus, The Alps, Nova Sicilia, and
Narcolombia, for example) mark the American landscape as the dispersed, freeenterprise chanceries of semiautonomous nations (1992, 44-45); where policing has
been remanded to competing rent-a-cop security systems (Stephenson 1992,14-15;
Blakely and Snyder 1997). His is a world where it has been decided that "there's only
four things we do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode (software), and
high-speed pizza delivery" (Stephenson 1992, 2).

The important issue is not vision, which is plentiful in the best cyperpunk science fiction authors, but a ready and fruitful geography that is their stock in trade
(Ross 1991; Starrs and Huntsinger 1995). Strains of utopianism in geography are farreaching, and the study of unreal or intended locales requires a great deal of thought
about what places ought to be (Porter and Lukermann 1975). The likelihood that cy-
berspace is the herald of an idyllic futureworld will seem remote to many people.
In its essentials cyberspace is information, and if Adam Smith, David Ricardo,

and Karl Marx taught that "capital" has an independent reality, then that tidbit has
equal bearing on cyberspace and its topography of data. Information has a distincThis content downloaded from 149.156.89.220 on Mon, 11 Jul 2016 22:01:47 UTC
199
tive form and reality; no less a cultural historian than Daniel Boorstin remarked on
this in tracking changes "where machines would do the work of scribes, where the
printing press would displace the scriptorium, and knowledge would be diffused to
countless unseen communities" (Boorstin 1983, 510). It is this diffusion-the sweeping arrows representing data movement-and its effects that help give cyberspace a
more empirical presence.
That stockpiling data has independent value is a 199os byword; likely that note
was ushered into geography during the 196os by the enfants terribles of the quantita-
tive revolution (Gould 1979). Information or data can now be colonized and stolen,
transferred and quantified (with some difficulty), and it has dimensions of depth,
time, and height. Except for palpability, cyberspace includes most of the essential
qualities we expect places to have.

Boundaries of sovereignty once traditional and stolid, casting states in the shapes
decreed by great colonial powers more than a hundred years ago, are ever more chal-
lenged: shot through like a colander by an information-moving system of unmitigated complexity, unparalleled efficiency, and redoubtable power. The subversions
of information, flowing swiftly across those boundaries, are culturally unsettling.
That is one of the reasons why the "unwired"-off the Internet-countries include a
large portion of the world's authoritarian realms (MMQ 1997b). Telecommunications
has been an uninvited guest at the banquets of the global economy for decades; it now
has a seat at the head table. The geography is as inescapable as it is ensnaring. Yet in-
formation is not, of course, the same thing as knowledge, and there are dissenters
who warn of a Faustian bargain: "One trend is clear: A growing cultlike faith in information, a belief that if we hook up to the Internet we'll be smart. Full of facts. Brilliant
with information. Sense of motion without moving" (Swerdlow 1995, 15).

CYBERSPACE FACT
The details are known. In 1969 there were four nodes, or connected points, on the
early U.S. Department of Defense network, Arpanet (Dodge 1998). With the development of the data-moving protocol, TCP/IP, in 1982, 550 hosts existed on a nascent
Internet (Sterling 1993).3 Contemplating sixteen years of growth on a log scale (Figure 4), the relentlessness of the rise is evident. In January 1998, according to the latest
Network Wizards survey, Internet hosts-a most conservative category-numbered

nearly 30 million, with many varied kinds of hookups: PPP, SLIP, ISDN lines, T-1, T-3,
o1 and 1oo megahertz Ethernet, which multiply at up to 15 percent per month (NW
1998; Quarterman 1998). Even in the bygone late 1980s, the Internet was being described as "probably the most important scientific instrument of the late 20th century" (Sterling 1993). Experts in 1997 suggested that the total number of moderately
skilled users is 57 million; the 30 million figure counts just individual networked ma-
chines, or hosts-each machine can have multiple users (Quarterman 1997).4

A list of the top twenty-five countries, in terms of being wired, reflects an aston-
ishing mix of cultural, climatic, technological, wealth, and boredom factors: Finland
stands at the top, with 63.5 Internet hosts per thousand residents, followed by IceThis content downloaded from 149.156.89.220 on Mon, 11 Jul 2016 22:01:47 UTC
200
Worldwide Growth in Internet Hosts, 1981-1998

100,000,000
0,000,000
1,000,000
w? Zi::?s100000
10,000
1,000
O100
10
o~ ?~ Zo z/ o.> oz Jo oz Jo o~. Jo o~. IElo . ~o 7o
FIG. 4-A log scale suggests the relentless growth of the Internet since 1981, as reflected in numbers
of Internet hosts. Sources: NW 1997, 1998.
land, Norway, and Antarctica (Table I). Then, of course, comes the United States. But
these statistics say more with a finer look at the data-with 38 hosts per thousand,
Antarctica ranks as an Internet grandee, except that there are only 152 hosts on the
entire continent, most of whom are transient scientists (MMQ 199gg7b). By contrast,
the United States may rank fifth in hosts per capita, but it has no equal in access-
more than g million hosts, compared with Canada, in second place, with 879,ooo.
January 1997 saw 194 countries on the Internet, including some fifty added to
the roster in 1996 alone. About 80 percent of the world's countries have at least a token Internet presence (MMQ 1997j, 3). In fact, it is far easier to describe the countries
that have no Internet presence (and to surmise why) than to name the active players
(Table II).
Many of the newly industrialized countries of Asia--Singapore, Hong Kong, and
even Guam-rank above Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea in the proportion of population that is linked to the Internet--but then, Macau is an up-and-comer, and Malaysia has the fastest growing Internet count in Asia. No other Asian country reaches
the one-host-per-thousand-people threshold (MMQ 1997e). Latin America and the

Caribbean have adopted the Net at varying rates; although Chile leads in hosts per
capita, followed by Brazil and Paraguay, Brazil leads Latin American in the absolute
number of hosts (83,252)--about the same number as in Connecticut. But whereas
Connecticut has 26.1 hosts per thousand residents, Brazil comes in at o.512 per thou-
sand (MMQ 1997b, 1997c, 1997h).

201
In Africa, too, the growth of the Internet is remarkable. In 1995 South Africa (and
the French Overseas Department of Reunion) were the only African states with
significant Internet activity; yet by January 1997 two-thirds of African countries had
a Web presence, although in nearly half of the forty-one cases the hosts numbered
fewer than ten. South Africa's hosts-119,228-outstripped the number in secondplace Reunion by 136 to 1 (MMQ 1997d).
TABLE I-TOP TWENTY-FIVE WORLD INTERNET HOSTS PER CAPITA,
JANUARY 1997
COUNTRY
NUMBER OF HOSTS PER
TOTAL NUMBER
1,000 POPULATION
OF HOSTS
Finland
63.5
Iceland
43.6
323,927
11,788
180,087
Norway
41.1
Antarctica
38.0
152
United States
Canada
Sweden
Australia
Bermuda
New Zealand
Switzerland
Denmark
Netherlands
35.0
9,330,410
879,778
259,769
532,942
1,499
85,281
160,379
112,680
309,086
30.5
29.2
29.2
24.1
24.0
22.3
21.5
19.9
San Marino
18.8
462
Monaco
15.7
498
Austria
12.9
Singapore
United Kingdom
Hong Kong
Germany
Virgin Islands (U.S.)
Anguilla
12.1
9.3
103,104
41,015
696,813
71,405
776,362
8.9
861
11.9
11.3
8.5
89
Ireland
8.5
Vatican
30,280
8.3
Luxembourg
8.2
3,403
Source: MMQ 1997b.
Internet use varies among European countries (Figure 5), with some interesting
upstarts in places like Slovenia and Hungary, but little is happening in Spain, Italy, or
even across much of the United Kingdom, which, in per capita use (11.9 per thousand), ranks about with Louisiana (11.6), one of the least wired places in the United
States (MMQ 1997C, 1997f). France is a remarkably slow adopter (4.76 hosts per thous-
and people), thanks to discord about the hegemony of American English on the
Web, but also in defiance of Web-disseminated cultural imperialism. Combat over
tariffs, protectionism, and access to information are developing among the countries linked to the World Wide Web. Resistant to the libertarian spirit of the Internet,
such tussles are entirely consistent with the established precedents of the global
economy:
202
The first great political goal [of business and finance] is escape-escape from the
past. Commerce either persuades a society to relax its laws and social obligations or
it exits to another society. As production moves elsewhere, a second great political
task emerges: persuading the developing territories themselves to adopt new rules,
laws to protect the free flows of commerce, and, above all, to protect the property
rights of capital. (Grieder 1997, 28)

TABLE II-NONPARTICIPANTS AND RECENT ARRIVALS ON THE INTERNET,
JANUARY 1997
NONPARTICIPANTS RECENT ARRIVALS
Afghanistan Bosnia
Chad
Burundi
Ethiopia Cambodia
Gabon
Cameroon
Gambia
Congo
Guinea-Bissau Eritrea
Iraq Lesotho
Kyrgyzstan Liberia
Laos
Nigeria
Libya Papua New Guinea
Malawi Rwanda
Mauritania Tanzania
Myanmar Togo
North Korea Vietnam

Somalia Yemen
Sudan Zaire
Syria
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Source: MMQ 1997j.
The United States is something of a cipher: New Mexico is the most wired state,
with Washington, D.C. number two and with Utah, Virginia, and California numbers three through five (Figure 6). The effects of university communities and federal
laboratories on host counts is obvious: The bottom-ranked states have only recently
begun to invest seriously in higher education and K-12 infrastructure, and catching
up takes both time and tenacity. At rock bottom remains Arkansas, but even its
count of hosts per thousand people is close to France's.
The United States is so far ahead of other parts of the world in computer and
Internet use that much of the globe almost disappears from view-the United States
has twelve times the number of Internet users as Germany, for example. That should
suggest, if nothing else does, that this technology is elite and to some extent may be
available only to the overdeveloped world; another distinction, in fact, between the
technological (and economic) haves and have-nots.
State-level information for the United States turns out to be somewhat overgeneralized. Detailed surveys in 1997 looked at county-level and even city-level information and found striking concentrations of Internet hosts and use-a finding that may
203
European Internet Hosts

/lumber per 1,000 Population, 1997
63.5
41.1
Finland
Iceland
/lorway
fweden
/fwitzerland
Denmark
/letherlands
19.9
18.8
fan Marino
Monaco
Austria
United Kingdom
Germany
Ireland
Vatican
Luxembourg
flovenia
Liechtenstein
belgium
Estonia
france
4.34
Czech Republic
Hungary
fpain
Italy
Gibraltar
Portugal
Greece
Andorra
Faeroe Islands
Malta
flovakia
Latvia
1.65
1 1.45
Poland
1.01
Croatia
0.66
Lithuania
0.481
Russia
0.455
bulgaria
Yugoslavia
0.282
0.268
Romania
Ukraine
0.172
0.137
Macedonia
0.0797
Jersey
Armenia
0.0609
0.0404
Georgia
0.0255
Moldova
0.0252
belarus
Albania
0.024
0,0159
Guernsey
0.0154
0.00156
*.. i 'I
bosnia/Herzegovina
'
'
I''
...
'
'
Azerbaian
10 20 30 40 50 60
70
FIG. 5-Internet connectivity in Europe, as measured in 1997 by the number of hosts per thousand
people, ranges widely. Source: MMQ 1997f.
204 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
United States Internet Hosts

flumber per 1,000 Population, 1997
~B~B~B~B~B~ . . i P ~ ~ ~BB~B~~ !~~~~ ~~ ~flew Mexico
Utah
........ ................ ....V irginia
California
Minnesota
Colorado
....... ..... ... ...... ... ................. ....... .. .............a ry la nd.......... .. ............ ................. ....... M ary la n d
... . _.._.. .... ...... ..... .... .................. /N e b r a s k a
. .. ........ . .................. . ....... ............ ........... .........I ................. ......... ............................ ......................................... M i c Michigan
h ia r e
.1-1.11.1.1-11"...
...
..
.....
Oregon
.C
._a^^slpasraer^Bs ..-~S~~;~;~ '"" ..^.........lm~~~~ ...~~~~~..... P North Pakota

~ lJ l ^ ~ .. ^....^~ .. ^... ^~ ~M ain e
Wisconsin
^ ^ , ^.... .. .. . ^... . .. -.. ..... . ... - .... . . . . .......... . ... ..... ..... .... .......... . .... ................. ......................... ...... .. ....................... ............... ..... ............................. I... .. . ...con s i n a
,.................. ......................... .......................... ................. ............................................................... ............ ................. W a s h i ng t o n
"lew York
Rhode Island
Pennsylvania
~! ........ ~e888 ~ ~ s~e~~~IoIdaho
.._?ll ?l...'...............~l.ll? I? ..Vermont

.............
..........
Missouri
Iowa
onnecticut
.. ...... .e ...... ........... n tA rizona
^.,..................................
...........................
Arkansas
-G6-The nmesoItre...... hotprtouadpepeielaware w

Alaska
Hawaii
... ..:: ........ .....................W yom ing

large nu r o........ ........ niver ... ..... in .... . c.a.se. o..... Virina,iz .bleInternevlew Jer s .Cfey-
.... .........c .o........s . Sucs 97,1 7,197rioida

...... . ....;;.;.;;.;.;. .................. ............................ .. ....... ... .. ... ................................. ...................... . ...
Indiana
Montana
flevada
.....
,.,.,::~
s~
Tennessee
ii~~ii~"""~`~ """"""~`~~'""'~........... ... _outh Carolina
and ashigton D.C, beauseof fderagovrnmetacivites. West Virginia

Alabama
~g"""`~`;"'~;'m ~ " """"""~"""~"" Arkansas
0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225

55 per 1,000 average nationwide
FIG. 6--The numbers of Internet hosts per thousand people are comparatively high in New Mexico
and Washington, D.C., because of federal government activities. Utah and Virginia reflect a relatively
large number of universities and, in the case of Virginia, sizable Internet service providers. California's significance is obvious. Sources: MMQ 1997a, 1997c, 1997i.
205
not surprise people who are accustomed to the subtleties of scale but that is intrigu-
ing in many cases. Los Alamos, New Mexico, as case in point, ranks as the county
with the largest per capita host count; but when considered as a city, Los Alamos
drops to twenty-sixth per capita. Many of the other top-twenty locations are large
college towns (Table III). The data are even more formidable when the total number
TABLE III-MOST NETWORKED AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 1997
NUMBER OF HOSTS PER TOTAL NUMBER
COUNTRY OR AREA 1,000 POPULATION OF HOSTS
Los Alamos, N.Mex. 984.7 17,934

Charlottesville city, Va. 822.9 33,546
Pitkin, Colo. 759.8 10,249
Lafayette, Miss. 492.6 16,509
Siskiyou, Calif. 443.4 19,594
San Mateo, Calif. 430.5 295,730
Pocahontas, Iowa 423.3 3,810
Santa Clara, Calif. 398.6 637,575
Whitman, Wash. 388.4 15,323
Rappahannock, Va. 385.4 2,777
Harrisonburg city, Va. 379.0 12,675

Grant, Kans. 370.9 2,855
Fairfax, Va. 343.1 309,612
Anderson, Tenn. 342.7 24,533
Douglas, Colo. 331.0 36,954
Cottonwood, Minn. 329.2 4,056
Washtenaw, Mich. 325.3 96,026
Tompkins, N.Y. 268.3 25,796
Centre, Pa. 264.6 34,790
Graves, Ky. 239.5 8,525
Sources: MMQ 1997a, 1997g, 1997i, 1997j.
of hosts is counted, along with the rate-the three counties of the San Francisco pen-
insula step up with 1,050,673 hosts (Table IV).

There is in the United States a ubiquity to the Net, to the Matrix, to cyberspace-terms roughly equivalent-that is far beyond fad or fashion. The CBS NCAA
basketball Final Four broadcast has a Web presence; so does Amnesty International;
CNN is everywhere; and, thanks to IBM'S sponsorship, the 1998 winter Olympics will
prove ceaselessly cybernetic. The procedures and possibilities of even deep archival
research are changing, with search engines, retrospective databases, and virtual li-
braries-elaborate indices of on-line resources-for disciplines, including history,

geography, and anthropology, ready and waiting on the Web.
The face of the Internet shows a variety of looks. That it is changing with remark-
able speed should surprise no one. There are some troubling questions of access, of
the availability of technology and training, of the amount to time that users spend
drawn into the Web, and these will not soon go away. A line by David Bowie, playing
an extraterrestrial visitor in Nicholas Roeg's science fiction film The Man Who Fell to
Earth, comes to mind, as he watches an entire bank of television sets simultaneously,
206
TABLE IV-LARGE AND HIGHLY NETWORKED AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 1997
TOTAL NUMBER OF
NUMBER HOSTS PER 1,000

COUNTRY OR AREA OF HOSTS POPULATION MAIN CONTRIBUTORS
San Mateo County, Calif. 295,730 430.5 Silicon Valley; universities

Santa Clara County, Calif. 637,575 398.6 Silicon Valley; universities
Fairfax County, Va. 309,612 343.1 UUNET; Internet service
providers; universities
Washtenaw County, Mich. 96,026 325.3 University of Michigan

St. Louis city, Mo. 79,031 224.8 McDonnell Douglas;
Southwestern Bell
Middlesex County, Mass. 241,334 170.8 Harvard University; silicon

businesses
Travis County, Tex. 113,903 166.5 University of Texas, Austin;

computer firms
San Francisco County, Calif. 117,368 159.6 University of California, San
Francisco; San Francisco State
University; large businesses
Hennepin County, Minn. 153,008 144.5 University of Minnesota

Fulton County, Ga. 102,692 143.0 Bell South; Georgia Institute of
Technology; Emory University;
computer firms
Sources: MMQ 1997a, 1997C, 1997g, 1997i, 1997j.
ously, each tuned to a different show: "So much to see, and nothing to think about"
(Roeg 1976).
Questions about information technology, about telecommunications, will and
must remain. Access to information has changed. Ways of doing business have
changed. Research has most decidedly changed, as have such mundane but essential
matters as citation systems. The issues of regionalism are familiar to many of us-is-
sues of territoriality, of citizenry, of literature and sense of place, of capital and

finances, of trade, of weapons, of belligerencies. I cannot and will not argue that the
Internet, the Matrix, is benign-that is doubtful, in fact. The usual questions of nationality, identity, geostrategy, and tribalism still obtain. Profound, and threatening, identities abound on the Internet, which is a bulky player in world identity, but they bring
with them uncertain manners, resembling the proverbial 8oo-pound gorilla. How
those personalities fit into the here-and-now is still a matter for analysis. Martin Lewis
and Karen Wigen have considered the evolving regional relationships of the world,
concluding: "If one is to think seriously about the world, one must have recourse to a
spatial vocabulary.... [We should] retain and reform those maps, recognizing that
weighty ideological issues are at stake in the way we conceptualize the world" (Lewis
and Wigen 1997, 205). Cyberspace is a signal part of that metageography.
Simultaneously cyberspace is a larger mass phenomenon and a highly individualistic one. It captures the dynamism of a part of the global economy while sustain-
207
ing iconoclastic cultures of formidable plurality. There are intriguing and

complicated questions regarding the Internet and how its regional bounds, usually
drawn by analogy, should be sketched. In Crime and Puzzlement John Perry Barlow
suggests:
Cyberspace, in its present condition, has a lot in common with the 19th Century
West. It is vast, unmapped, culturally and legally ambiguous, verbally terse (unless
you happen to be a court stenographer), hard to get around in, and up for grabs.
Large institutions already claim to own the place, but most of the actual natives are
solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is, of course, a
perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new ideas about liberty. (Barlow
1990)
DATA VERSUS KNOWLEDGE
Network technology has a precocious revolutionary quality that Internet boosters

are given to fawning over. In part that is because all of cyberspace invokes the real
with the surreal; the seen with the unseen; commerce with the artistic and the avantgarde. A leveling takes place, not across world regions but spanning degrees of inter-
est and access. Data on the number of Internet hosts bear out this contention, and
certain geographers who are not without foresight have been very fast indeed to
make use of this new technology. Some of the best have turned to new ways of teach-
ing and reaching that make the computer an extension of the all-seeing eye.5
That omniscient quality of the cyberrealm is not universally well regarded. Many
users have come to consider its intrusions Promethean and view with fear both the
existing and potential results. The surveillances of cyberspace are the same as the in-
vasive technology of Big Brotherism that George Orwell captured too effectively in
1984. I recall the words of Harvard constitutional scholar Harvey Mansfield Sr., who
remarked that one of the truly unwritten but assumed privileges of Americans was a
right to disappear and start over, to begin again. That "right" is gone now, consumed
in a myriad inescapable data-collection systems. Gibson has warned of nasty if perpetual presences that monitor daily life, with sufficient accuracy to set a reader's
nerves on edge:
And the Yakuza would be settling its ghostly bulk over the city's data banks, probing
for faint images of me reflected in numbered accounts, securities transactions, bills
for utilities. We're an information economy. They teach you that in school. What
they don't tell you is that it's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level with-
out leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.

Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified. (Gibson 1986b, 16-17)
Before any Pollyannaish flavor surfaces, there are substantial problems in the less lit-
erary and more here-and-now expression of cyberspace. From a geographer's per-
spective, no less adept and visionary a practitioner than Carl Sauer warned of
geographers who too soon sit at their desks, breaking off from exploring and gathering data in the field-his counterpoint was that "To me the complete geographer is an
eager and qualified field observer" (Sauer 1954). In geography, as in other disciplines,
208
the technology of cyberspace can curtail fieldwork: Stroking the keyboard, staffing
the Global Positioning System base station, and plying the squishy pomade of postmodern prosody have replaced the direct observation that formed a cornerstone ex-
perience for five generations of geography professionals.

Seeing this removal from the field as a damaging experience is by no means new.
When my 198os teacher, Berkeley geographer James J. Parsons, wrestled one of his
office collection of rolled Landsat Thematic Mapper images from a place of honor in a
corner, it was invariably to comment on a pattern evident with notable splendor on the
3-by-3-foot blown-up frames; even then the technological cognoscenti pooh-poohed

that aesthetic and visual approach-they wanted at the data on the keyboard of a wYCE
or TTY terminal. A corollary appears in the warnings that John Pickles issues in Ground
Truth; and an admonition that an image is not the place is more than echoed by Martin
Kenzer in his picaresque refutation of geography's continuing and attractive flirtation
with geographical information systems (GIS) (Kenzer 1992; Pickles 1995).

Computer use is by nature elitist and exclusionary, a triumph of not just First
World machinery and technical appropriations but one that places the daughters
and sons of a wealthier and wonkish intellectual elite in command; alive and at work
is the technological priesthood once lamented by well-thinking philosophers and

pragmatists in the defense industries and nuclear power plants of the North. Data on
Internet users, admittedly self-selected in their response to surveys, suggests traits
that include high income, high education, and a pronounced concentration in the
more developed countries (Nua, Ltd. 1996). "Internet hosts per capita correlates
with per capita GNP: the richer the country... the more Internet hosts," asserts the
best source of current analysis (MMQ 1997j), John Quarterman of the Matrix Information Data Service, who includes a regression analysis of exactly this relationship
(MMQ 1997b, 34).

Civil libertarians are perturbed that the control of Web content is devolving into
the hands (and an unseen yet filtering microcode) of a few technologically adept ex-
perts-the World Wide Web Consortium, based at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, and its nascent Platform for Internet Content Selection, or PICS (Harmon 1998).6 The concern is worthy of an X-Files episode, but it also reflects an entirely plausible worry: Arguments about the so-called clipper chip, designed to
make digital data more easily read by government security agencies, and over public
key-encryption strategies-so sophisticated that intelligence services fear losing forever the ability to listen in at will on conversations-are both byzantine and a reflec-
tion of government capabilities that are more limited than the ability of a legion of
antiestablishment hackers and codies-many of whom are by strong inclination
skeptics about government control of technology. On the flip side, at hand is one of
the first times that the creators of technology are working directly at odds with spo-
ken state strategic desires. Once handmaidens in government service, the averse
technologists are more like cheerful heretics with the bit between their teeth.
The excitements of this technology are apparent even to teenagers of the 199os,
who define a forthcoming constituency for geography. Andrew Ross has remarked
209
in Strange Weather on the swiftness with which the academic world, including its
supposed guardians in cultural studies and critical theory, has been swept onto the
cyberwagon:
So too our common intellectual discourse has been significantly affected by the recent debates about postmodernism (or culture in a postindustrial world) in which
the euphoric, addictive thrill of the technological sublime has figured quite promi-
nently. The high-speed technological fascination that is characteristic of the post-
modern condition can be read, on the one hand, as a celebratory capitulation by

intellectuals to the new information techno-cultures. On the other hand, this celebratory strain attests to the persuasive affect associated with the new cultural tech-
nologies, to their capacity (more powerful than that of their sponsors and
promoters) to generate pleasure and gratification and to win the contest for intellectual as well as popular consent. (Ross 1991, 99)
Nor are all philosophers sanguine. Maybe the most telling plaint comes from supporters of free thought and individual integrity like Theodore Roszak, who, in The
Cult of Information, admonishes that "It would surely be a sad mistake to intrude
some small number of pedestrian computer skills upon the education of the young
in ways that blocked out the inventive powers that created this astonishing technol-
ogy in the first place. And what do we gain from any point of view by convincing
children that their minds are inferior to a machine that dumbly mimics a mere frac-
tion of their native talents?" (Roszak 1994, 244). When Roszak, author of the 1969
classic TheMakingofa Counter Culture, warns a quarter-centurylater that computers risk crippling, rather than improving, reason, there may be extra cause to take
heed.
Obviously, not everyone is enthusiastic about bringing a technological genie

into the comfortable oaken realms of geographical study. There is worry enough
about GIS, for example, and the recent debacle in southern Russia with the arrest
(and subsequent release) of a global positioning system-wielding employee of

Qualcomm, a San Diego-based company, who was accused of spying in establishing
measurements for a cellular communications network, is indication enough of how
technological innovation can be misunderstood-or at least misconstrued. It was no
accident that an adept commentator on geographical philology, Joni Seager, was

moved to remark in 1981 that "The triumph of machine metaphors over our language and lives may be on the wane. The days of cybernetic shibboleths are num-
bered, and 1980 may be marked in linguistic circles as the year of humanist
transition. It is a change we all should welcome, for life under the technocratic tyranny is precarious" (Seager 1981, 9). For all that optimism, the world of the 199os has
proved rather different-these are times where "cyber-" almost anything has risen to
the fore in ways both formidable and cloying: Wired magazine, a darling of the 1990S
computer culture, glorifies the appearance of its pages above any substance or content; New York Times travel reviews that assess the ease of modem access in perniciously expensive resort hotels; computer chips mounted with baubles and pins to
be sold as art trouve.
210
FIG. 7-NSFNET traffic, vintage 1991. This now-somewhat-dated vision of the United States' computer network backbone in September 1991 is a manifestation of the very early World Wide Web
Internet, with traffic a minute fraction of mid-1997 levels. The NSF relinquished control to private
telecommunications firms in April 1995, and subsequent expansion of demand has been enormous.
Source: Cox and Patterson 1992 [http://www.nasa.uiuc.edu/scms/DigLib/text/technology
/Visualization-Study-NSFNET-Cox.html].
CYBERSPACE AND REGION
The world of information technology is of late either tormented or blessed by seem-
ingly endless innovations and complications, so much so that only an insurmountable optimist or the hopeless diehard would aspire to capturing fully the human and
mechanical dimensions of cyberspace. Yet it clearly falls to geographers to make an
attempt. The geography ofcyberspace, once the province of some of the cleverest and
most astute fiction writers of the 198os-William Gibson, Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson, Kathy Acker, Bruce Sterling-has been outed to the world at large. The
Internet, the Matrix, the Net, the world of Ethernet and terabytes (a million megabytes) and enhanced bandwidth-which makes moving large Web pages and files
practicable over the Internet-is no longer an abstraction.
An acute skeptic might question the value of what is transacted in this nether
world. The answer is, a great deal. A general map or schematic of the Matrix might be
elusive-but it is far more difficult, and stranger, to explain exactly what this technol-
ogy, culture, and practice does (Figure 7). There are accompanying questions:
211
Where is the data-the wealth-of this system coming from? Why does it have value?
Those two queries are not so easily dealt with.

The importance of cyberspace in the new regional geography is not as a curiosity,
a twin-headed lamb. Instead, cyberspace is literally redefining all manner of regional
associations, economic transactions, and social relations. "It is perhaps understandable," avers Anson Rabinbach, "that historians fall into a state of future shock when
contemplating the technical achievements of the past few decades. But it is far more
serious for them to project their musings onto a grand evolutionary sweep of history
pointing towards man's 'harmoniously coming to terms with an industrialized

world' (Rabinbach 1994, 1o). There is in all of this a rough blending of printed word
and image with which geographers ought to feel at home. Nothing is wrong with being comfortable and happy with the hidebound book; but to fear too much a novelty
like the World Wide Web is restrictive and small-minded, as John Lienhard suggests:
[The Web] makes a grand resource, but it's a resource that fits no model of in-
formation transmittal we were raised with. Rather it gives us means for flitting
about, reading a passage here, seeing an image there-rapidly building a picture in
our mind.
And history's story takes shape in a new form. We're used to stories that unfold
from the printed page. On the Web, the story builds up like a mosaic. Some tiles are
false, but they soon become obvious and we replace them with better tiles. Once we
feared the lack of control of knowledge on the Web. Now it's clear that the very intensity of interaction roots out falsity.
In the end, we see from a different perspective and learn different things. The
Web, far from replacing the printed page, has served instead to show how foolish it is
to want to be an authority. No matter how much we know, the Web always turns up
one new fact to jar us with-one more book to drive us back to. (Lienhard 1997)
Cyberspace has been cast into reality, reified, ascribed with its own personality.
There is sensitivity in such works as Manuel Castells' evolving three-volume opus,

The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, which trumpets the rise of an
information society at the cost of direct experience and personal contact. But even
Castells' trilogy falls short in ways that are reminder enough of the separation between such a study and, for example, Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism,
15th-18th Century, which Castells obviously wants to evoke (Braudel 1982-1984; Castells 1996-1998;). Tacitly behind all this is an assertion that technology steers history,
an argument that is as tarnished as the old saws of geographical determinism (Smith
and Marx 1994). As Ziauddin Sardar has put it, "the digital quest for absolute freedom ends with information, the strings of ones and zeros, taking the form of physi-
cal entity" (Sardar 1996, 38). Technology is a vehicle, not the driver.
The evolution and components of cyberspace-its internal and external economy, its evolution and sense of place, its function as a constituent of postindustrial
society-are individual issues (Murphy 1991). Processes are afoot that challenge
many of the givens of regionalism as traditionally practiced (Price and Lewis 1993;
Starrs 1994).
212
By the standards of economy, social and technological convergences,

community-building agent, cyberspace is a dominant player for the next century.
From the suburban Microsoft Network subscriber to the console cowboy hacking
the Net, from cyberspace cafe client to the intercontinental financier, the stakes and
level of interest could hardly be higher. Embedded in cyberspace is the aspect of car-
nival so beloved to postmodernists for its embracing of transcendent perisocial activities; and there is plenty of reason to recognize in it jubilant ritual and folklore
(Dundes and Falessi 1975; LeRoy Ladurie 1979; Jackson 1988). The world as once un-
derstood is no longer. I cannot think of a comparable change so rapidly adopted; it

blows by the adoption and diffusion of the telephone like an airplane past a passen-
ger pigeon (MMQ 1995).

IF You BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME ...
No less worldly a philosopher than Michel Foucault has written in The Care ofthe Self
that "What one is, and what one needs to devote one's attention to as to an ultimate
purpose, is the expression of a principle that is singular in its manifestation within
each person, but universal by the form it assumes in everyone, and collective by the
community bond it establishes between individuals" (Foucault 1986, 93). This is the
quandary of cyberspace: It has the liberatory power to be all three of these things at
once. But not everyone can participate, not everyone would choose to if they could,
and there is much that is excluded, for all the good that can be borrowed from this
new and libertine sensibility. Cyberspace has a recognizable geography, but it remains an elusive space, rather than a community (Dodge 1998) (Figure 8). Some
authors have argued otherwise (Rheingold 1994), but the formation of community
requires contact and individual identity merging into shared goals-and there is
nothing like eye contact to establish the bonds that make places work. It is a special
oddity of cyberspace that science fiction has provided so much inspired work, espe-
cially when the treatments of cyberspace on film have been, at best, hackneyed.
Cyberspace is a pivot for the new regional geography. Its study has eclipsed scru-
tiny of capital flows, stock-market transactions, and telecommunications as the

most dynamic part of the global economy. The cyberspace phenomenon is widely
seen as overshadowing its constituent parts-a mistake. The danger is assuming that
cyberspace and the Internet are identical. Cyberspace is more: huge financial transactions traveling electronically, imagery from satellites moving with light-speed
swiftness, and sometimes more velocity than verisimilitude or thought. Social implications loom. In many respects cyberspace is profoundly democratic, which capital or mercantile flows generally are not. The growth of cyberspace augers for more
of the same. No one will step away: When Jesse James was asked why he robbed
banks, he responded that that was where the money was. Plus, opportunities for
puckish invention and profit in cyberspace are too great; there is the symbolic support for a range of cyberspace personalities that have been called avatars (Stephen-
son 1992, 57, 60-64; McCordack 1996); there is the rapidly building economic
importance of electronic commerce transacted on the World Wide Web; there is acThis content downloaded from 149.156.89.220 on Mon, 11 Jul 2016 22:01:47 UTC
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ceptance of Web addresses as a commonplace of business and social interaction, and

all bespeak something that will not go softly into any dark or anonymous night. And,
to be fair, communication and the exchange of information is hugely easier with

electronic mail, imaging, and publication.
The Net supports, already, a remarkable assortment of voices; each singular, and
many heard from before only when their cultural survival was about to be extin-
guished (Froehling 1997; Warf and Grimes 1997). That there should be so many
different chords and models says something about what we now have and of the
complex nature of cyberspace as a region. Its metageography, as Lewis and Wigen
would suggest, is both important and novel (Lewis and Wigen 1997).
Perhaps it should fall to that natural philosopher of the 196os, Richard Brautigan, to have the final word on this complex range of questions:
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
214
I like to think
(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics

where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,

returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters

and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

(Brautigan 1968)
Bishop Jacques Gaillot, curate of the virtual diocese of Partenia, might not be quite so
heartened, but he would for a certainty recognize in Brautigan's poem the Franciscan
sentiment of Assisi. This thing, "cyberspace," is a conundrum. There is nothing

wrong with that: Having to consider where technology fits into life is a healthy un-
dertaking. But it is best remembered that cyberspace has become a social force. It
influences much of what geographers do; it certainly has profound influences on the
business world and on the education of our children. There is no virtue to eluding cyberspace, computers, and the Internet in everyday interactions. Not for terribly long
will that even be possible: From the start of the Web in 1989, there is now near ubiq-
uity (Hafner and Lyon 1996).

One among the goals of regionalism is the examination of how people function
with their surrounds. But there are tones of alarm that geographers can both sound
and help salve. The geography of cyberspace is widely thought of as a kind of hedge-
hog issue-one big idea with diverse roots. It is better thought of as a fox, knowing
(and doing) many things, but without any overarching plan, a kind of libertarian
(and occasionally libertine) realm (Barnett 1978). The geography of cyberspace
reflects perfectly the evolving world system and the desires of its collective popula-
tions and variety of its human denizens. It does what it is compelled and allowed to
do, even if, at least now, cyberspace is much more a mirror of the elite than an egalitarian tool, better a Cuisinart than a crowbar. Cyberspace may someday prove to be a
cybernetic garden, Edenic in potential, with the good bishop as its earthly host.
Right now, perhaps, the portents are less overtly promising, but there is plenty of hu-
manity to work with the Web, and cyberspace may yet come around.
Cyberspace is fundamentally unseeable, although technologies attempting to

overcome that limitation exist. There is no accepted agora, no ready gathering place,
215
and the field conditions in a silicon world are to some less than appealing. Chat
rooms and e-zines are pallid compared with a more flavorful landscape of sight,
smell, and sound (Meinig 1979; Gade 1984; Smith 1994). It is no accident that many of
the metaphors used to describe cyberspace draw on a vision of the wilderness, or

frontier. What made the frontier so formidable-both looming as attractant and repellent in its declension-was an absence of the familiar, of civilization. The Partenia
Web site earns many electronic hits but has a human population of precisely zero. In
cyberspace, after all, everyone is, by ironclad definition, an outsider. To improve that
sentiment we might task ourselves with a koan: What is the place where everyone is
but nobody lives?
NOTES
1. The bishop's Web-site suffix changed from [.fr] to [.org], reflecting internal French politics.
Most of the material on the site in 1996 migrated intact to the new site, but the disappearance of infor-
mation is a reminder that on the Web there is nothing reliable to record past archives and initiatives-the "library" is always changing-and older ideas and technologies will simply disappear, a
warning echoed by Billy Barron in a recent Matrix News (Barron 1997).
2. The bishop's Web site has picked up some significant traffic. According to the site's archives,
the Web presence of Bishop Jacques Gaillot includes 175 pages, with 205,000 hits, or visits from other
users, and the first year in operation of the Web site drew 3,237 electronic mail messages to the bishop
and some 300 links to [http://www.partenia.org] from other sites [http://www.partenia.org/eng
/actu/htm#ps].
3. Network Wizards, which has for the last several years been the definitive source of demographic data on the Internet, offers the clearest definition of a host: "A host is a domain name that has
an IP [Internet protocol] address or record associated with it. This would be any computer system
connected to the Internet (via full or part-time direct or dialup connections), i.e. [nw.com],
[www.nw.com.]" (NW 1997). This can be translated into something more accessible: One computer,
hooked up to the Internet, is one host, but it can have many users-anyone who uses a laboratory or
office computer to check e-mail or surf the Internet is a user. So the host is a machine with a single
identification, but the users can be many.
4. John Quarterman of the Matrix Information Data Services notes that the core Internet-users
who are able to distribute information by packet switching using transmission control protocol /
Internet protocol, or TCP/IP-numbers some 36 million people, worldwide. The consumer Internet-users who are able to access information-numbers some 57 million. Users of e-mail in January
1997 numbered some 71 million. Quarterman suggests that the best estimate for overall Internet use is
57 million-the consumer users. On the other hand, the Internet is growing so swiftly that by January
2000 e-mail users may number 827 million, with 767 million consumer users (Quarterman 1997).
5. Ken Foote, of the University of Texas, Austin, in particular, comes to mind; not least through
his marvelous work on "The Geographer's Craft" and "The Virtual Department" site [http://www
.utexas.edu/depts/grg/virtdept/contents.html]. Foote's vision is extended in new directions in his
book, Shadowed Ground, which takes in the difficult terrain of utopia and attempted intentional com-
munities that have gone bad (Foote 1997).

6. The very concept of a "policing" of the Internet is enough to move some cyberspace partisans
to open grieving. But there are legitimate questions of improving the function of the Internet, which
on occasion slows to a snail's pace. The parameters of conflict are anything but subtle, and because the
standards and operation of the Internet are so much governed by technical wizards, their role is especially key:
In a private vote by E-mail a few days before Christmas [1997], a group of about 200 computer scientists and
engineers endorsed a set of rules that could govern some of the most fundamental ways people around the
globe will get electronic information-and will be prevented from getting it-in years to come.
216
Members of the group, the World Wide Web Consortium, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said they were simply agreeing on a technical standard to allow much-needed filtering of the Web's vast
store of information.
... But a growing number of civil libertarians argue that these technologists are in some ways acting as an
unelected world government, wielding power that will shape social relations and political rights for years to
come.... In an increasingly vigorous debate, civil liberties groups are condemning the PICS technology as a
mechanism for censorship, while Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the
consortium that approved the standard, is defending it as a force for social good. (Harmon 1998, ?C, 1)
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The Sacred, the Regional, and the Digital

THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL*

-Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers, 1953

miter as a holy charge rather than a divine privilege.

vacant from the following day midday onwards" (Gaillot 1995).

Copyright ? 1997 by the American Geographical Society of New York

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

tic Tangiers| Oran _

FIG. 1-Partenia, in modern-day Algeria. Sources: [http://www.partenia.fr]; base map: Mountain

and done, considered a divinely consecrated representative of the Almighty. The

Even Francophiles could be excused for giving voice to an exasperated,

THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL

BULA CASA PON IAi A

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.tt? d; t w/?^(^tf/^<<?/?^?.^* s6^(e /6f^y? g ^9 S?w*.

FIG. 2-The entire subject of Jacques Gaillot's appointment as vescovo titulare

official documents confirm the appointment. Source: Prefettura della casa

blesome senior cleric to what in effect amounted to an ecclesiastical nonplace.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

.partenia.org] (Gaillot 1996).' Although there might be no living patron resident

pertext link (Figure 3).2

THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL

The geography of this transubstantiation-with effects on communications

than a few trappings of cyberspace-trafficking in mysterious ways; operating at

claiming the True Faith; administered on earth by an exotic priesthood of acolytes;

space is always given to answering when called upon.

a presidential address to the Association of American Geographers, was a suggestion

cognitae. If we ourselves do not personally feel equipped to conduct excursions into

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

less non-space of the simulation matrix, the electronic consensus-hallucination that

170). Undertakings like Apple Computer's Project X [http://hotsauce.apple.com]

geographers ought to bestir themselves to consider how information has become

tributor to studies in the world and regional economy. Cyberspace is assuredly a

landscape? (Benedikt 1991, 2).

an extreme, where FOQNES (Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities: Mr. Lee's

high-speed pizza delivery" (Stephenson 1992, 2).

In its essentials cyberspace is information, and if Adam Smith, David Ricardo,

THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL

qualities we expect places to have.

with information. Sense of motion without moving" (Swerdlow 1995, 15).

Network Wizards survey, Internet hosts-a most conservative category-numbered

chines, or hosts-each machine can have multiple users (Quarterman 1997).4

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Worldwide Growth in Internet Hosts, 1981-1998

o~ ?~ Zo z/ o.> oz Jo oz Jo o~. Jo o~. IElo . ~o 7o

the one-host-per-thousand-people threshold (MMQ 1997e). Latin America and the

sand (MMQ 1997b, 1997c, 1997h).

THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL

NUMBER OF HOSTS PER

Source: MMQ 1997b.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

rights of capital. (Grieder 1997, 28)

Libya Papua New Guinea

North Korea Vietnam

THE SACRED, THE REGIONAL, AND THE DIGITAL

European Internet Hosts

204 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

._a^^slpasraer^Bs ..-~S~~;~;~ '"" ..^.........lm ...~..... P North Pakota