Language, Identity and Conflict

8 Virtuality and propinquity

Gradually the comfortable reach of the nation-state as revenue raiser and infrastructure provider has collapsed into jobless growth, fiscal crisis, and investor relocation. Borders criss-crossed by road, rail, and fibre-optic cable become more permeable to goods, services, finance, and knowledge. Control over space, the geographic buffers of the nation, started to melt away with the decline of the so-called Golden Age of mass production. Compounding these changes in what, how and where we produce are the profound changes in East–West and North–South relationships as the binary balance of terror decentralises into a multiplicity of local conflicts.

(Tapscott, 1996: 310)

Introduction

The information technology revolution ...