A Sense of Place

SPECIAL REPORT TECHNOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY October 27th 2012 A sense of place TECHCOV.indd 1 16/10/2012 14:39 SPECIAL REPORT TECHNOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY A sense of place Geography matters as much as ever, despite the digital revolution, says Patrick Lane THERE WAS SOMETHING odd about the black car at the junction of Sut- ter and Hyde Streets. It was an ordinary saloon. Its windows were clear, and it looked in good condition. And yet, as the lights changed and the car pulled away into the bright San Francisco morning, a question remained. Why was it sporting a luxuriant pink moustache at its front? The moustache is the trade mark of Lyft, a ride-sharing service that began in the city this summer. Its drivers are private individuals who, in eect, rent out seats in their cars for a few dollars a time. Lyft’s cut is 20%. It works through a smartphone app. When you register as a customer, you supply your phone number and credit-card details. When you want a ride, you open the app and see a map with the locations of the nearest moustachioed motors. You tap to request a ride, and the app shows you your driver’s name, his rating by past passengers (out of ve CONTENTS stars) and photos of him and his car. He will probably greet you 3 Local services online with a friendly st-bump. After- Your friendly neighbourhood wards you rate him and pay app through the app. He rates you, 5 Maps too, so if you are poor company The world in your pocket you may not get another Lyft. So that Lyft cars can avoid 7 The geography of start-ups being classed as taxis, with all the Something in the air attendant regulation, technically 8 Shapeways the drivers do not charge fares New Eindhoven but receive donations from their passengers. You may con- 9 Urban life sider that distinction too ne to Open-air computers survive legal scrutiny: a regulator 11 Data centres has sent Lyft and two rivals, Side- Not a cloud in sight Car and Tickengo, cease and de- sist letters. But John Zimmer, 12 National dierences chief executive of Zimride, the The world is what you make it rm that runs Lyft, seems con- 14 Life o- and online dent that it will. Mr Zimmer explains that Zimride, which also runs com- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The new local muting and inter-city car pools, is named not after him but after Zimba- In preparing this report the author has beneted from the ideas, time bwe, where his co-founder, Logan Green, saw people sharing minibuses. and kindness of many people besides You might also ask whether people will be willing to accept Lyfts those mentioned in the text. Special from strangers, or to let strangers into their cars. But Mr Zimmer says the thanks are due to Azeem Azhar, rating system allows both sides to establish a reputation as friendly and Hugo Barra, Henrik Berggren, Nathan Blecharczyk, Nicolas trustworthy. A driver averaging less than 4.5 stars will be dropped. The Brusson, Grady Burnett, Dan Crow, company vets potential drivers carefully, requiring higher standards (for Sarah Garrison, Bill Gourlay, Manik example, on criminal records) than some taxi companies. Lyft has also ar- Gupta, Florian Heinemann, Andrew ranged insurance of up to $1m for its drivers. Hogue, Aljoscha Kaplan, Saul Klein, Aleks Krotosky, Christian Madsbjerg, The ride-sharers spied an opportunity partly because in San Fran- John Lee, Paul Lee, Roger Lee, Ruth cisco taxis can be hard to nd. Uber, which provides black limousines at Lindley, Mariana Mazzucato, Florian the tap of an app, saw a similar gap (though its cars are pricier) and has Meissner, Jill Miles, Lanham Napier, since rolled on to 16 other cities. Kenny Peng, Chris Riley, Danny Rimer, Saul Singer, Anil Stocker, But the opportunity would not exist had the physical and digital A list of sources is at Linda Strick, Alexander Trewby, Molly worlds not become tightly intertwined. Every ride using Lyft involves not Economist.com/specialreports Turner, Amy Tykeson and colleagues, only a physical trip but also several much longer digital journeys: be- Elizabeth Varley, Niko Waesche and tween the passenger’s and the driver’s smartphones, via Wi-Fi and cellu- An audio interview with Julian, Susan and Sophie Shel- the author is at bourne. lar base-stations, along telecoms carriers’ networks and through switch- Economist.com/audiovideo/ es and routers to and from the servers of Lyft as well as, ultimately, the 1 specialreports The Economist October 27th 2012 1 SPECIAL REPORT TECHNOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY The future is mobile Forecasts from 2011 Subscriptions, bn Tablets and mobile PCs Smartphones 3.1 2.2 2.7 1.7 1.2 0.4 0.9 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.6 0.3 0.7 0.2 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.04 0.08 0.1 2008 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Mobile broadband subscriptions, bn 5.0 Mobile traffic, monthly exabytes* 4.4 2011 2017 forecast 3.6 2.8 2.0 3.6 4.4 1.4 0.5 0.9 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.17 0.09 0.2 2008 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Voice Mobile phones Mobile PCs and tablets Source: Ericsson *1018 bytes 2 passenger’s, the driver’s and Zimride’s banks. But it also demon- ferent places varies so much. Forecasts of the death of cities strates the importance of physical location to today’s digital have turned out to be even wider of the mark: over the next two realm. It is central to services such as Lyft, connecting a passenger decades the United Nations expects the world’s urban popula- in one place with a driver in another so that both can travel to a tion to grow by 195,000 a day. third. Geography still matters. A second line of thought puts digital and physical life in Obvious? Not necessarily. In the couple of decades since separate spheres. Internet idealists declared cyberspace to be in- the internet began to expand from academic to widespread pub- dependent of governments of esh and steel. In online games lic use, there have been three main ways of thinking about its re- people thousands of miles apart can battle their way through the lationship with the physical realm. The rst, which reached its ruins of the same imaginary cities even though they will never peak in the late 1990s, emphasised how the digital world would meet on Earth. More peaceful souls can have a go at virtual agri- reshape the real one. People everywhere would have access to culture without getting their hands dirty. Their avatars can live the same electronic libraries of information, news and com- out their dreams in the virtual online worlds of Minecraft. But ment. Many companies would be freer to choose their location, these two worlds were never really separate. Governments have as better communications meant they would no longer need to wielded power over the internet as well as over their physical be near their suppliers or customers. Setting up businesses domains, blocking sites and bashing bloggers. Weapons in on- would become easier, as would the outsourcing of services that line war games, virtual cows in FarmVille and playing Mine- could be supplied electronically. Sta could work just as well at craft with others cost real money. Cyberbullying is just bully- home as in expensive and noisy oces, communicating with ing. What happens online does not stay online. colleagues by e-mail or video link. This special report will emphasise the third option: that the A good deal of this has come to pass. Amazon has shifted physical realm also shapes the digital one. One big reason for this book-buying from the high street to the computer, leaving many is that nowadays a lot of people are online wherever they go. empty shops in its wake; now it is leading the move from the More and more people are connected to the internet in more and printed page to the e-reader. Mechanical Turk, a division of Ama- more places at ever higher speeds. They carry powerful comput- zon, oers companies an on-demand, scalable workforce, ers, in the form of smartphones or tablets, which are continuous- available around the clock, to carry out online tasks for a few ly updated with new information. By 2017 the volume of mobile cents a time. Today’s worker may leave the oce physically but data trac will be 21times greater than it was in 2011, according to never digitally: he is attached to it with invisible tethers through Ericsson, a big maker of telecoms-network equipment. The num- his smartphone and his tablet. He can take part in videoconfe- ber of mobile-broadband subscriptions (mostly for smart- rences so realistic that he might be in the same room. Even medi- phones) will jump from 900m to 5 billion. Local information cal examinations can be carried out online. (where the nearest chemist is; whether there is a taxi nearby) is more valuable to people when they are on the move than when Geography lives they are sitting at a desk. In other respects, however, reports of the death of dis- For the companies racing to provide local services over the tance (the title of a 1995 special report in this newspaper) have internet, maps are an essential foundation. In recent years there been much exaggerated. As this report will explain, many inter- has been an explosion of investment in creating online represen- net start-ups head for San Francisco, New York, Berlin, London or tations of the real world: maps in two dimensions and in three, other hubs to be close to like-minded people.

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