Writing on mobility, infrastructure, and the structural forces that shape civilization.
Every transport revolution in history — railways, automobiles, aviation, the internet — reorganized civilization. The pattern has repeated four times. It has never failed. Each time, the companies that controlled the access point between people and the new geography occupied one of the most concentrated and durable positions in the economy that followed.
The internet eliminated distance for information. It cannot eliminate distance for physical presence. The physical economy — healthcare, education, food, the act of being somewhere — remains governed by geography. It is also, by every measure, the larger economy.
The physics required to eliminate physical distance at regional scale crossed its critical thresholds in the last five years. The geography where it starts is identifiable. The consequences follow a pattern that is now four centuries old. This series examines what happens next.