The Death of Distance; How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives

Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999. Seventh Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 24 cm, xvi, 303, [1] pages. Illustrations. Map. Notes. Index. Inscribed by author on fep. Dame Frances Anne Cairncross, DBE (born 30 August 1944 in Otley, England) is a British economist, journalist and academic. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Senior Fellow at the School of Public Policy, UCLA. She chairs the Executive Committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. From 1973-1984, Cairncross was on the staff of The Guardian newspaper. She was its as economics correspondent from 1973-1981 and women's page editor from 1981-1984. Previous to her time at The Guardian she worked at The Times (1967-69) The Banker (1969) and The Observer (1970-73). She was on the staff of The Economist from 1984-2004 working in roles covering the environment, media and public policy. From 1999-2004 she was management editor. She chaired the Economic and Social Research Council between 2001 and 2007 and was President of the British Science Association (2005-06). Her book, The Company of the Future, was published in 2002 by Harvard Business School Press. In March 2003, she won the Institute of Internal Auditors' annual award for business and management journalism. Cairncross is also the author of The Death of Distance, a study of the economic and social effects of the global communications revolution. In 2004-05, Cairncross held the honorary post of High Sheriff of Greater London. Never before in human history has technology advanced as quickly as today. The biggest changes are taking place in communications and computers, which are being combined in new and astonishing ways. In The Death of Distance, Frances Cairncross analyzes the impact of this revolution on business, government, and society. The author sees a world where time zones will matter more than miles, where culture, language, and interests bind communities more closely than geography, and where new ideas and information will travel faster than ever before to the remotest corners of the globe. The death of distance as a determinant of the cost of communicating may well be the single most important force shaping society in the first half of this century.