On the three 'laws' of spatial interaction and a string theory finale: Perspectives from social physics with examples in the digital and retail economy

Abstract

Tobler's 'law' that distance underpins spatial interaction has been a fundamental construct of theoretical geography since the quantitative revolution in the 1950s and 1960s. The gravity model is its most common manifestation. The greatest challenge to this 'law' came with the advent of the internet, where distant things became very near things because information packets could be transferred at speeds approaching the velocity of light. The 'death of distance' hypothesis became the vogue for a short while, until Baker (2005) showed that the gravity model is still relevant, because the rate of information transfer is not infinite, but is limited by the speed of light.