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‘‘Iinvoke the first law of geography: everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things’’(Tobler 1970). How could a sentence justifying heuristic calculations in a crude urban growth simulation generate an icon now known as Tobler’s First Law (TFL)? Why has this law resonated so strongly in geography? Waldo Tobler could invoke a first law of geography since the proposition that near things are more related seemed reasonable in 1970. It is enduring since near and related are useful concepts at the core of spatial analysis and modeling. And in 2004 and beyond, TFL is still useful since the rise of geographic information science and technologies allow greater sophistication when measuring and analyzing these concepts. This is ironic considering that Tobler apparently invoked the law in part to apologize for the slow computers at that time. I am going to sidestep the issue of …