The second Global Village Symposium is happening at a moment when the "Data Superhighway" debate has made its appearance in the Austrian media and the growth potential of the telecommunication industry and the information market is so widely recognized it even becomes an issue of a G7 meeting. We are very happy that our original effort to gather an expert community around the questions of "Architecture and City Planning in the Age of Telecommunication" (1993) has led to the emergence of a forum that discusses the manifold aspects of "Living Spaces and Life's Quality in the Age of Telecommunication" - in a City that has announced its readiness to participate actively in the process of social innovations enabled by technology.

Nevertheless, we should not forget that the metaphors in which we talk about information technology - "highway" and "village" - express our desires for safety and clarity in a rapidly changing world rather than an already existing concept of how to use those technologies in the most meaningful ways. This is why a gathering like "Global Village" is so important: because it brings those concerned about the potential of technology together to turn their desires into creative energies - to find within the existing contradictory reality the shape and the building blocks of a sustainable future.

Therefore the agenda of the conference start we look at the various players who push forward the technological development promoting economic globalization; they continue with a theoretical and empirical look on the complex relations between places and economic activities in the time of distance - independent businesses; then focus on the city, which becomes an increasingly important factor in the age of globalization. Eventually, some questions are raised about the basic changes in our life that emerge when the dominant role of the workplace is gone; and some visionary presentations to make us sensitive for the new patterns of life emerging in its place.