think detroit techno, london acid, the cologne sound, etc. used to be the order of the day, though many if not all of these categories were internally diverse (carl craig and jeff mills can't really be said to produce the same kind of techno, e.g.). but there were some general attirbutes of techno (and other forms of electronic dance music) coming out of specific places that means you can often talk about coherent local sounds or scenes.
with the expansion of the internet and the instantaneousness of things, can you really even talk about local scenes producing identifiable local sounds anymore?
if so, how have they changed as a result? if not, how is that impacing the state of techno generally?