AN OVERVIEW OF SPACE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ITS RESEARCH WITH THE INFLUENCE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Information technology,which not only accelerates the pace of economic globalization but also changes human life,has great influence on the understanding of space.The space as a vehicle of human life reflects the changes which information technology makes.And great changes have taken place in the under-standing of space because the concepts of digital technology,information and innovation have been integrated into the studies of space.The authors point out that in china,information technology has import on space studies from the following three aspects:(1)the geographical space;(2)the regional organization in which the characteristics and evolvement of urban space structure are most concerned;(3)the changes of urban space which is caused by information technology.Therefore the new paradigms and concepts are emerging.Infor-mation technology provides a new way to explore space.This paper summarized the researches on space and time,space structure,the form of space influenced by information technology and the influence of informa-tion technology on space.The paper also examines the concept of traditional space.Geographers had been able to explain "space" comprehensively before 1970s.However,with the development of information tech-nology the meaning of space has been changed in many aspects like the concept,scale and dimension.We can see the viewpoint of space changes from the realism to the relationship,and spatial scales tend to be infinitely narrow,and space extends towards multi-dimension.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct researches on space in the new situation.The finding shows that space studies develop towards a multi-dimension and change from the theoretical research to the empirical research.The authors also suggest that it is necessary to con-struct a theoretical system of space.In the case of China,which is a developing country,the understanding of space should be related to economy,society and nature,especially geography.With the influence of industri-alization,urbanization,globalization,the geography space will be changed to be more complex,so the further researches should be done based on the new spatial theory to grasp the mechanism of the trend of urban de-velopment and then make effective government policies..