Love this column from Tim Harford in Wired.

First, he issues a clear challenge to the idea that "distance is dead."

"If distance really didn't matter," Harford write, "rents in places like London, New York, Bangalore, and Shanghai would be converging with those in Hitchcock County, Nebraska (population 2,926 and falling). Yet, as far as we can tell through the noise of the real estate bust, they aren't. Wharton real estate professor Joseph Gyourko talks instead of 'superstar cities,' which have become the equivalent of luxury goods — highly coveted and ultra-expensive. If geography has died, nobody bothered to tell Hitchcock County."

Harford observes that "technology makes it more fun and more profitable to live and work close to the people who matter most to your life and work. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, an expert on city economies, argues that communications technology and face-to-face interactions are complements like salt and pepper, rather than substitutes like butter and margarine. Paradoxically, your cell phone, email, and Facebook networks are making it more attractive to meet people in the flesh."

"Email doesn't stop you from wanting facetime. Just the opposite: By enabling us to maintain productive business relationships with more people, it encourages more face-to-face contact.

Tthe world seems to be changing in a way that actually demands more meetings. Business is more innovative, and its processes more complex. That demands tacit knowledge, collaboration, and trust — all things that seem to follow best from person-to-person meetings. "

As Harvard professor Ed Glaeser has written, "Ideas are more important than ever, and the most important ideas are communicated face-to-face."

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