Diffusion of ICT and Mobility: Permanence and Renewal of Research Issues

The question of the relationship between the diffusion of communication tools and the physical mobility of individuals is not new and arose with the arrival of the fixed telephone and, more recently, the development of the Internet and especially the e-commerce. The extraordinary diffusion of individual and especially portable communication tools, like the mobile phone, has recently given a new impetus to this topic in the fields of transportation economics, geography and sociology. This article proposes a critical analysis of the questions that have been explored by the literature, in order to highlight the issues that we think should be better explored.