The Hyperlocal Web

"The Internet turned the world upside down ... literally. In the analog world all development from a town on the prairie to a port city started in a place and grew socially and politically from that place in space. This was true for every religion, business and culture. Place remains at the core of our social organization. The Internet, for all practical purposes, began everywhere. It was a mile wide and an inch deep." –G. Patton Hughes

"For its first ten years, [the world-wide web] was irrelevant locally as its reach in most specific places was comparatively insignificant. Now, with the penetration of the Internet reaching 70% of households in developed nations, the largely unexplored frontier of the Internet is the local social network that seeks to aggregate Internet users into local community networks. Because place is important, the resulting hyperlocal networks will require physical presence in the communities they serve." –G. Patton Hughes

"People and information want to be closer. When planning where to put capacity, network designers are guided by the law of locality; this law states that network traffic is at least 80% local, 95% continental and only 5% intercontinental. Between 1997 and 1999, for example, 30% of all U.S. Internet traffic never crossed the national infrastructure but stayed within a local metropolitan network." –John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing In A Complex World.