Geopolitics of Information Economy

1999

This article presents the Varenius perspective on the societal dimensions of geographical information technologies and the geographical dimensions of information technologies in general, and puts them in the context of the research literature of the last ten years.

Geography and Natural Resources, 2014

The long-term trends in information and communications technology dissemination over the 20 th -early 21 st centuries are investigated. Innovation waves of diffusion of communications and the factors that are responsible for its territorial unevenness are discussed. An analysis is made of the competition and complementarity of different means of communication as well as of the possibility for the "overtaking" scenario of "catch-up" development in the sphere of informatization. Global diffusion of the Internet and telephony, and the dynamics of the "digital divide" are outlined. Some issues related to the information and communication openness of the countries of the world are discussed.

Description of course: The world’s information technology infrastructure has, until recently, been a relatively contained area of contestation in international relations. Technologies capable of reaching mass global audiences were few (for example, shortwave radio, undersea cables, satellites, and the like); those available for person-to-person communication (such as the telephone) were limited, and a relatively small number of actors were involved in their development and governance. This, of course, has changed with the advent of the personal computer, the proliferation of mobile and internet technologies, and the rise of the information age. The diversity, diffusion, sophistication, and reach of the technologies enabling global communications are drastically different from those available just twenty years ago. Whereas the second half of the twentieth century witnessed extensive debates about the costs and benefits of protecting a state’s media system from floods of foreign cultural exports, today’s states—fearful of losing all control over the flow of information within their sovereign borders—are acting quickly to build, secure, and control the infrastructures that enable information to flow from one nation to another. In the West, these contests are typically framed in the context of freedom expression, protection of intellectual property rights, and national security. Foreign policies enacted in non-Western states to better monitor or control the flow of information are often characterized as efforts at state censorship, antidemocratic, and contrary to fundamental human rights codified in international law. Heavy-handed efforts by China, Iran, and Russia, for example, to create state-level information infrastructures are contrasted to “a freedom to connect,” a phrase Secretary of State Clinton used to describe a proposed fundamental, universal human right. This framing is, of course, strategic. Portraying efforts to control the flow of information via crude policy mechanisms as censorship normalizes the status quo, portraying the existing communications infrastructures and policies as preserving the global citizen’s freedom to connect. In reality, all states enact policies to preserve sovereignty, and the emergence of the information age and knowledge-based societies requires greater control of information to preserve government legitimation and power projection. In the 1980s and 1990s, the United States, the birthplace of the internet, benefited from a first-mover advantage, establishing the Global Information Infrastructure, driving the Telecommunications Annex to the GATTs Agreement and, for a time, dominating the ascendance of a global, information and data-driven economy. As a result, the United States, often through its private sector, drove the information technology policy agenda at the global level. The debates surrounding the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) and 2014 NetMundial meeting, both discussed throughout the class, reflect the growing significance and tensions around a foundational question in international communication: to what extent can and should states act to manage the flow of information within their sovereign territories?

Syllabus: Geography of Information Society (2015) in Master Degree Programme on Political Geography and Geopolitics

quageo, 2013

The paper attempts to identify important factors significant for global information society development and to determine the significance of geospatial (geo-information) technologies. The starting point is international measures of the development level of information & communication technologies (ICT) and information society (IS). The relevance of the particular factors was defined using the general segmentation of the milieu, taking into account social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal and ethical factors and also estimating the global spatial dimension of ICT and IS development. The diagnosis serves as the context of considerations concerning the contribution of geographers and cartographers to IS.

American Foreign Policy Interests, 2014

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2006

Journal of International Business Studies, 2001

... and high technology and research; and (e) power and influence (government, headquarters, trade associations, and international agencies). ... Page 12. 11 Information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet, create new possibilities ...

Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung, 2000

This article will examine the claims regarding the nature of work in the emerging information society. Particularly, it will be concerned with challenging the "Death of Distance" thesis presented by , Beck (1998), and others. This view suggests that geography and especially the location of work is increasingly irrelevant to the nature and conditions of labor in the information age. The problem with such an assessment is that it creates the idea that this is the emergent nature of labor for the vast majority of workers. In fact, such employment patterns are not the emerging norm, not even in the high-tech sector itself. This will be exemplified by an analysis of the industrial sector of Multimedia.

Digital Humanities 2018, Puentes-Bridges, 2018

Las discusiones y reflexiones sobre los desequilibrios culturales, políticos, lingüísticos y de género en las Humanidades Digitales se han concentrado sobre aspectos generales y, con pocas excepciones (Dacos, 2016; Fiormonte 2017b; Grandjean, 2014; Weingart 2014; Weingart and Eichmann-Kalwara 2017), no han ofrecido un análisis de datos y casos concretos. Nuestra propuesta intenta aportar una contribución al debate a través del análisis de las 420 colaboraciones del congreso DH2017 de Montreal. Los datos archivados nos permitieron realizar mapas de colaboración entre países y entre países y centros académicos o de investigación; así como mapas de temas de investigación (palabras clave) y de redes de autores. El resultado es una imagen real de lo que son hoy en día las Humanidades Digitales a nivel global, y donde parece confirmado el papel hegemónico del Norte global, y sobre todo de los países anglosajones, en la comunidad internacional.