Introduction - Global Geographies of the Internet - page 4

knowledge and information. In his reading, the time-space compression of post-
modernism was manifested in the global ''space of flows,'' including the three
''layers'' of transportation and communication infrastructure, the cities or nodes
that occupy strategic locations within these, and the social spaces occupied by the
global managerial class:
Our societies are constructed around flows: flows of capital, flows of information, flows of
technology, flows of organizational interactions, flows of images, sounds and symbols.
Flows are not just one element of social organization: they are the expression of the
processes dominating our economic, political, and symbolic life…. Thus, I propose the
idea that there is a new spatial form characteristic of social practices that dominate and
shape the network society: the space of flows. The space of flows is the material orga-
nization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows. By flows I understand
purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between
physically disjointed positions held by social actors (1996:412).
He notes, for example, that while people live in places, postmodern power is
manifested in the linkages among places and people, that is, their interconnec-
tedness, as personified by business executives shuttling among global cities and
using the internet to weave complex geographies of knowledge invisible to almost
all ordinary citizens. This process was largely driven by the needs of the trans-
national class of the powerful employed in information-intensive occupations;
hence, he writes (1996, p. 415) that ''Articulation of the elites, segmentation and
disorganization of the masses seem to be the twin mechanisms of social domi-
nation in our societies.'' Flows thus consist of corporate and political elites
crossing international space on transoceanic flights; the movements of capital
through telecommunications networks; the diffusion of ideas through organizations
stretched across ever-longer distances; the shipments of goods and energy via
tankers, container ships, trucks, and railroads; and the growing mobility of workers
themselves. In this light, the space of flows is a metaphor for the intense time-
space compression of contemporary capitalism. Through the space of flows the
global economy is coordinated in real time across vast distances, i.e., horizontally
integrated chains rather than vertically integrated corporate hierarchies. In the
process, it has given rise to a variety of new political formations, forms of identity,
and spatial associations.
For Castells ( 1996 ), the space of flows and the new geometries that accompany
it wrap places into highly unevenly connected networks, typically benefiting the
wealthy at the expense of marginalized social groups. Ruggie ( 1993 , p.141) likens
such networks to the ''economic equivalent of relativity theory.'' However, the
global space of flows is far from randomly distributed over the earth's surface:
rather, it reflects and reinforces existing geographies of power concentrated within
specific nodes and places, such as global cities, trade centers, financial hubs, and
corporate headquarters. Indeed, because the implementation of fiber lines reflects
the powerful vested interests of international capital, these systems may be seen as
''power-geometries'' (Massey 1993 ) that ground the space of flows within concrete
historical and spatial contexts.