Social effects of teleportation

 So say some sort of teleportation device is invented, I'm gonna say stationary as opposed to personal, as I doubt they would put that kind of freedom in unpredictable hands(a little of that might come later); just as the Internet has connected a lot of the world, what would happen if people could simply pop over to wherever for a bite to eat, commute to work, do some sightseeing, shorten that long distance relationship, etc.(I'm gonna say it's priced somewhere between riding a bus and a train)

What effect do you suppose this would have on culture and society, and if you have any knowledge in the field of psychology, then that as well.

Question number one: Is continuity maintained during teleportation?

Basically...in a Star-Trek-style transporter, the traveler is scanned down to the quantum level, converted to energy and data (i.e. destroyed) and then an exact copy is constructed from what was sent at the destination.

The copy would believe itself to be the original, but the original would be very, very dead. That's the continuity flaw, and unless it is addressed somehow I can see it being a pretty big philosophical issue.

I wasn't planing on going too deep into how it worked, just how it effected the way the world worked, so I'll say it's the same person with a change of coordinates.

For the first time I am handwaving the science from the get-go.

Well, how hard is it to set up and use? Can you have a teleporter in every city or in every town? Is it so expensive that only the richest can use it regularly or is teleportation considered an inalienable right? What's the upper limits on mass and volume?

If it's too expensive then it's not going to influence society very much. If it's too widespread the setting turns boring.

It is pretty widespread

Well lets talk travel distance. Would this be a stand in for air travel or even interstellar travel? The further it can go the more impact will have in the big picture. If it is only at local level like air planes the effects will focused around a similar travel mechanic as aircraft travel. If it is capable of interplanetary travel that can change the picture depending on how much can travel at a given point. It basically just keeps getting more complex from there.

The speed at which culture can expand is roughly speaking partly dependent on the speed in which people, goods, and information can travel. It could facilitate regular contact with distant outposts as well as ensure more ease of travel of cultural goods and people of said cultures.

As a possible source for the rapid spread of communicable diseases it could be a concern in that regard. In the "Empire from the Ashes" Trilogy such a disease spread very rapidly through a vast interstellar empire because such a system reached nearly all corners instantly and the only way to avoid it reaching uncontaminated planets was to disable or destroy their local teleporting system and activate planetary defenses to shoot down all approaching ships. The disease was highly contagious and ultimately lethal in all cases. It effectively destroyed the 3rd Empire in the series.

I was just thinking of earth, like, if teleportation was invented tomorrow, then given a few years to fall into common use.

I'm not opposed to the thought of future uses, but space travel wasn't something I thought we'd do much with.

So what I'm saying is that it would basically replace air travel and perhaps trains.

But I'm not saying that it wouldn't be able to go that far.

In that case then it would have a lot of similar effects and concerns as those methods of travel. On the other hand there would be no more plane or train jacking's. Though it might be possible for a teleporter to redirect someone somewhere else that might be a concern. Travel times would be shorter by a lot which could mean things like perishables which need to be shipped long distances are a more viable option. Food can be possibly zapped from field, to processing, to storage, to sales location with minimal travel times.

Work commutes could completely change depending on how common it is and cost. In theory someone could work in Russia and live South America and make it to work for an 8 hour shift every day.

Police and First responders could possibly arrive to any location with a teleporter unit at a moments notice and then to any hospital with one as well. Police could show up in a matter of seconds to a general neighborhood area and deploy from there. Same for fire and other emergency responders.

There are of course the obvious military applications of moving equipment, personnel, and vehicles long distances in small time frames.

If it's as cheap to move people and goods to the other side of the world as it is to ride a bus across town, globalization is going to get one heck of a huge boost.

This also somewhat ties into something I've thought about in regards to Guild Wars 2 : In that game, all cities are connected by a Portal Network centered on the main city of Lion's Arch. It's quick and easy to just walk from the Asura capital of Rata Sum through a portal into Lion's Arch, then have a leisurely stroll across Portal Square and enter the gate to the Black Citadel, which is literally a continent away.

What this means is that in effect, all those other cities are becoming...well, just separate districts of LA. You can have breakfast at a tavern in the human capital of Divinity's Reach, go shopping in Rata Sum, eat some Charr BBQ in the Citadel and then get roaring drunk in Hoelbrak, all in the same day. It'd actually be a longer (and far more dangerous) trip to reach Beetletun, a human town within sight of the city walls of Divinity's Reach.

When it's easier to go from city to city than to travel beyond a city's outskirts, can those cities be really said to be separate entities at all?

I'm no expert in any of the following, so take all of it with a significant dose of salt!

Is there any way of preventing cross-border transportation, or at least manning all potential jump-destinations? If not, borders would seem to become largely irrelevant. On the one hand, this might make it easier for people to travel, to find work, and to find a place that suits them. On the other hand, it seems like a potential security nightmare.

With the increased potential for earning money outside of one's home-country, the economics of the situation might become more complex. I imagine that this would, however, be mitigated by extant controls on the creation of bank accounts and taxation-related accounting for income.

I daresay that transportation companies—and their employees—would lose out somewhat, unless they can rework themselves to take advantage of the new technology. Depending on the specifics of the teleportation technology, some might remain largely unscathed, of course.

Finally, I imagine that widely-available teleportation would encourage mingling between people otherwise widely separated. As a result, I would expect an increase in cross-cultural understanding: the more one interacts with people of another culture, the more likely one is to find them to be just people.

Well, it would require both the teleportation... nodes is a good word, to be tuned to eachother or something like that (I don't intend including the idea of being torn apart because more than two are tuned to eachother). So perhaps someone with the resources could make there own and sneak in, however nodes both would have to be set to the same frequency.

As most governments arrest someone as opposed to killing them (at least temporarily) I imagine the more common defence is tracking as opposed to blocking teleportation as while I do want to keep the technical side positive, I don't imagine getting stopped mid teleportation would go very well.

In this case I'm not really planing on making a setting with this information (though who knows) I'm just really curious about the implications.