The new spatialities of the digital revolution. Challenges, structural reformulations and opportunities for Geography

Abstract

In the last twenty years, the new contexts and lifestyles derived from the digital revolution have generated neo-spaceships -new virtual environments for the construction of spatialities- that force us to transcend traditional analytical perspectives and lead to the re-consideration of basic geographic notions of the spatial dimension. The objective of this article is to examine the effects (in both epistemological and practical implications) generated by the almost infinite possibilities of interaction typical of the new information and communication technologies, in Geography. The new relational spaces of the digital age raise many questions: How do geographers respond to this new reality? Is cyberspace generated and built by man part of the object of study of Geography? And finally: What new problems and challenges does this stage present to the discipline? In order to answer these questions and to be able to dimension the effect that the neospatialities generated on a disciplinary scale, we must first examine the models of disciplinary definition, and then focus on the virtual environments of construction of the social space and its impact on Geography and finally on the role of the Geographer before the emerging themes of these new contexts.