Communication and the metropolis: Spatial drift and the reconstitution of control

The world has been shrinking for thousands of years, suggesting that the present integration of the world through modern transport and instantaneous communication continues an age‐old process of change. Despite this continuity, innovations such as computer networks, fibre optics, satellites and fax machines now permit an unprecedented spatial integration of almost the entire globe. This paper argues that contemporary ‘revolutions’ in transport and communications are having the same paradoxical effects that earlier ones had—simultaneously increasing the range of possible co‐ordination and the potential for greater social equality while, at the same time, increasing actual power differentials within and between societies. The paper first illustrates this thesis by reference to: (a) the invention of accounting and writing, which facilitated long distance trade, the growth of cities and increased social inequality; (b) printing, which led to a democratization of literacy but also to the ‘absolutist state'; and (c) the telegraph and the telephone, which permitted decentralization of production, and at the same time, centralization of control. It then examines the dual impact of today's communication breakthroughs, showing how the new technologies expand the range of production and consumption while at the same time enhancing the power and privilege of metropolitan centres of the ‘first world’.