Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
lines are preferable for point-to-point communications, especially when
security is of great concern, due to the great redundancy they of
ff
er. Because
the implementation of
ects the powerful vested interests of
international capital, these systems may be seen quite literally as “power-
geometries” (Massey 1993) that ground the space of
fi
fiber lines re
fl
flows within concrete
material and spatial contexts. The geography of global
fl
ber networks cen-
ters primarily upon two distinct telecommunications markets crossing the
Atlantic and Paci
fi
c Oceans, connecting the three major engines of the world
economy, Europe, North America, and East Asia (Figure 5.2). In 1988, a
consortium of
fi
fiber optic cable
across the Atlantic, a pattern identical to that of the early telegraph and
telephone (Hugill 1999). Similarly, starting in 1989, a growing web of trans-
Paci
fi
firms initiated the world's
fi
first trans-oceanic
fi
c lines mirrored the growing East Asian trade with North America. In
1997, several
fi
firms opened the self-healing Fiberoptic Link Around the
Globe (FLAG), a 27,300 kilometer cable connecting Asia and Europe, the
world's longest submarine telecommunications network. The industry also
constructed regional systems in Asia, such as the 12,000 kilometer Asia-Paci
fi
fi
c
Cable Network, and the Caribbean Fiber System.
No industry was more a
ff
ected by these changes than
fi
finance. Of course, the
mounting mobility of
ects
deep historical roots that go back to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
In the context of post-Fordism, Harvey (1989a:164) notes that
fi
financial capital did not spring up overnight, but re
fl
Flexible accumulation evidently looks more to
finance capital as its
coordinating power than did Fordism. This means that the potentiality
for the formation of independent and autonomous monetary and
fi
fi
nan-
cial crises is much greater than before, even though the
financial system is
better able to spread risks over a broader front and shift funds rapidly
from failing to pro
fi
fi
table enterprises, regions, and sectors. Much of the
fl
flux, instability, and gyrating can be directly attributed to this enhanced
capacity to switch capital
flows around in ways that seem almost oblivi-
ous of the constraints of time and space that normally pin down material
activities of production and consumption.
fl
Financial and producer services
fi
firms were at the forefront of the construc-
tion of
fiber networks in large part because they allowed the deployment of
electronic funds transfer systems, which comprise the nervous system of the
international
fi
financial economy, allowing banks to move capital around at a
moment's notice, arbitrage interest rate di
fi
erentials, take advantage of favor-
able exchange rates, and avoid political unrest (Langdale 1991; Warf 1995).
Such networks give banks an ability to move money around the globe at
stupendous rates: subject to the process of digitization, information and cap-
ital become two sides of the same coin. Liberated from gold, traveling at the
speed of light, as nothing but digital assemblages of zeros and ones, global
money performs a syncopated electronic dance around the world's neural
ff
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