ABSTRACT

The  Internet  revolution  has  made  long-distance  communication  dramatically faster, easier, and cheaper than ever before. This, it has been argued, has decreased the importance of geographic proximity in social interactions, transforming our world into a “global village” with a “borderless society”. We argue for the opposite: while technology  has  undoubtedly  increased  the  overall  level  of  communication,  this increase has been most pronounced for local social ties. We show that the volume of electronic communications is inversely proportional to geographic distance, following a Power  Law.  We directly  study  the importance of  physical  proximity  in  social interactions by analyzing  the spatial dissemination of new baby names. Counter- intuitively, and in line with the above argument, the importance of geographic proximity has dramatically increased with the internet revolution.