Towards Spatial Interaction Models of Information Flows

Internet related commerce (e-commerce) is going through a phase of rapid growth. The size of this business sector will undoubtedly have effects on the economies of many nations, particularly those, which rely heavily on ‘invisible earnings’ from the quaternary business sector. However, as yet, the scale of these effects cannot be predicted since there has been very little in the way of quantitative analysis of Internet information flows. It is not even possible to answer basic questions about the Internet, such as how many users there are or where they are located. In the absence of hard information and useful models, reliance is often placed on the predictions of Internet ‘gurus’ whose estimates often vary considerably.