Net loss: Government, technology and the political economy of community in the age of the Internet

This dissertation is a case study in the interactions of government, technology and the changing role of regions in our economy using the emergence of the Internet in Silicon Valley as the focus. It examines how technology shapes new industries, how federal investments fuel the growth of new population sectors and new innovations, how new business relationships grow around regional industrial sectors, and how global markets themselves depend on core regions that produce the innovation fueling those global economies.;The dissertation highlights how government action was crucial for the creation of both the Internet and the collaborative business practices and open computer standards that are at the heart of the Silicon Valley model. It shows how the nature of regional economies are changing as local elite business collaboration around industries like the Internet are replacing the broader public investments that fueled regional growth in the past. Accompanying this change is a radical restructuring of previously regionally-focused industries, such as banking, electric utilities and telephone companies, where changes in federal regulation are undermining regional planning and the power of local community actors. The rise of global Internet commerce itself is undermining the tax base of local governments, even as governments increasingly use networked technology to market themselves and their citizens to global business--usually at the expense of all but their most elite residents.;The dissertation focuses on key interaction between political choice and the direction of technology and its social outcomes. At the core of any changes in technology are changes in power relations and the Internet itself embodies changing social forces that are themselves reshaping which political and economic actors will hold power in the new era. In this way, the Internet is less the cables and wires tying homes and offices together than a system of contested rules for information exchange that are constraining the shape of power in the new information age. At the heart of this dissertation is how the battle over those contested rules are reshaping regional economies and politics in the modern era.