Verity Pravda

Wow. How can the regulatory environment "enable" the digital economy? Strange choice of word. ou'd think the regulatory environment might inhibit the digital economy, or on the positive side facilitate it. But ot, ever, enable. The question of the impact of electronic communication on the geographic dispersion of business is an interesting one. despite the grand prognostications about how it facilitates diverse activity the reverse happens. Consolidation, both of firms and by geography is the outcome. There is an article in Ithica de sol Pool's "The Social Impact of the Telephone" that argues the telegraph and telephone led to the growth of US cities. The consolidation of stock exchanges was facilitated by comms (we used to have separate ones in each city). The closure of country bank branches occurrd because people got the phone. (You couldn't tell customers to do phone banking before then). Interestingly there seems to be no comment here about how Australian e-banking doesn't match up to European standards. If I want to pay a bill and send a notice that I've paid it it has to be two transactions - one financial and one e-mail. Illl get to the rest in a second comment - but can I just say the initial post is just awful.