In this chapter, we will present the historical development and the contem¬porary patterns for cities as foci for connectivity. We will further outline the roles of cities in information production, transmission, gathering and retrieval, as pursued through pertinent media. The chapter will include several sections, highlighting informational and connectivity facilities and services in cities: face-to face communications (in market places and cafés); informational insti¬tutions (libraries, universities, newspapers, and publishing houses); and elec¬tronic media invented prior to the Internet (telephone, radio and television).

This chapter presents the development, structure, and distribution of the Internet for people, as well as of the IoT for non-living entities. The chapter will highlight, first, the history of the Internet and its structure. In this dis¬cussion, special attention will be devoted to the comprehensive nature of the Internet, in its double role as a communications medium and an information service, as well as to its becoming mobile, as of the late 1990s.

This chapter will elaborate on the uses of the Internet by urbanites for their obtaining of urban services, which were previously pursued solely in physical space (see also Kellerman 2014). In the following section, we will discuss the advantages in the obtaining of urban services via the Internet, followed by elaborations of specific urban services currently consumed, at least partially, also through the Internet.

In the previous chapter, we outlined numerous services that urbanites have traditionally obtained in urban physical space, and which they now growingly pursue through the Internet. Individuals, who use their Internet connectivity, whether fixed and/or mobile, for the performance of service activities, find themselves simultaneously present in physical space bodily and within Internet space virtually. Hence, this chapter is devoted to an exposure and interpreta¬tion of the emerging hybrid dual-space society, consisting of the double pres¬ences of individuals in urban physical and Internet virtual spaces. The chapter will focus on the very conception of hybrid dual-space and its emergence, followed by an exposure of the ways in which urbanites experience it, as well as function within it.

The Internet is consumed as a powerful communications, business, and infor¬mation tool, by commercial, industrial and service businesses, as well as by organizations and societies of all types. As such, the Internet is important for them, similar to its importance for individuals, as portrayed in Chapters 4_5. However, the Internet for businesses is not meaningful just for its consump¬tion, thus presenting a demand side. The Internet for companies and organi¬zations constitutes also a supply side, since companies serve as producers of products and services sold to individual customers, who are also Internet sub¬scribers. Thus, the Internet per se may serve as a mediating channel between demand and supply, as being the two sides of transaction processes between companies and their customers. Thus, in this chapter, we will elaborate, first, on the penetration processes of the Internet into the operations of companies and organizations, notably small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the numerous uses of the Internet pursued by them.

We will begin this chapter with the summaries of the previous chapters, pre¬sented in sequence. We will then move to an interpretation of the Internet as a general-purpose technology, and finally, we will conclude the book with an evaluation of the general theme of the book as presenting Internet applications, followed by Internet implications, within an urban framework.