a geopolitics of information?

This page considers geographies of information production, information flows and consumption in digital environments.

It covers -

• introduction
• push and pull in the infosphere
• information production
• information flows
• information use
• quadrants
• responses such as the WSIS

There is a supplementary note on the 'New International Information Order', 'New World Information & Communication Order' (NWICO) and World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

     introduction

1990s rhetoric that information just wants to be free ignores the fact that the global distribution of information is uneven, that information resources (and information creators) are often concentrated and that there are a range of cultural, economic and infrastructure barrier to the free flow of information from one part of the world to another.

That has led some observers to talk of a geopolitics of information - at its most simplistic a north-south intellectual property divide, with citizens of emerging economies in the 'South' unable to access the scientific/technological discoveries and other cultural products of peers in North America, the EU, Japan and Australia (ie 'the North').

Others critics have more ambitiously identified a 'New International Information Order' or 'New World Information & Communication Order' (NWICO).

That is one where gunboats have been replaced by satellites and licensing deals. It is one where OECD governments supposedly underpin a handful of corporations in exploitation of all nations through a mix of

• international trade agreements,
• control of critical parts of the global information infrastructure (GII),
• subversion of local cultural production through appropriation and under-pricing,
• monopolistic ownership of key economic tools such as software and fundamental discoveries such as genomic patents,
• commercialisation of goods such as geospatial information system data,
• and media systems based on 'orientalism'

Claims of a global information hegemony - often centred on the US - appear in works such as Empire (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2001) and Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Penguin Press 2004) by Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Cornelius Castoriadis' The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: MIT Press 1987) and Giovanni Arrighi's Adam Smith in Beijing (London: Verso 2007) and The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (London: Verso 1994).

Disparities between regions and cultures are also embodied in grand theory such as Arnold Toynbee's deeply problematical A Study of History, Samuel Huntingdon's apocalyptic The Clash of Civilisations & the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster 1996) and Edward Said's polemical Orientalism (London: Routledge 1978), which lack the subtlety of David Landes' The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1969) or Joseph Needham's magisterial Science & Civilisation in China.

Other works of particular value are Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (London: Little Brown 1998), Joel Mokyr's The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity & Economic Progress (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1990) and Jeffrey Williamson's Growth Inequality & Globalization: Theory, History & Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999).

The pieties of orientalism are questioned in Robert Irwin's For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (London: Allen Lane 2006), Ibn Warraq's Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism (New York: Prometheus 2007), Daniel Varisco's Reading Orientalism: Said and the unsaid (Seattle: Uni of Washington Press 2008) and Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (New York: Penguin 2004) by Ian Buruma & Avishai Margali.

     push and pull in the infosphere

We can identify two broad discontents about information geopolitics - 'push' and 'pull'.

Push reflects a sense that the advanced economies are eroding the integrity of some nations - and more broadly their cultures - through delivery of information.

In the West it's been fashionable to characterise information as an unalloyed good, with most restrictions on information flows - as we've highlighted here - being criticised as divisive, impractical, repressive or impeding economic growth.

That view of the internet as an information cornucopia is questioned by figures in states where information may be seen as something that is subversive of proper social relations (eg attitudes regarding religion, political authority and gender), a pandora's box associated with uncertainty and disharmony. The internet has also been treated as a symbol in broader disagreements with the reshaping of national and global markets, with critics in France and Canada as well as Saudi Arabia or China, protesting against global (ie US brands such as Disney or Microsoft).

In essence, 'push' critics are concerned that there is too much information coming from the North - too much, too cheaply and of the wrong type - rather than that it is too expensive. Responses have ranged from censorship of particular publications to national industry policies that leverage 'cultural exception' provisions in the WTO and other agreements.

Pull reflects a sense that much of the world consists of information colonies, paying exorbitant prices for access to cultural product that should be free, should be priced according to the capacity of consumers in emerging economies or should not have been commodified (eg because it's traditional knowledge unsuitable for dissemination outside a specific tribe).

Critics argue that the global intellectual property regime - an intrinsic aspect of international trading relations - is biased against Third World nations (and 'first nations' within those states), that global (ie Western) media embody the orientalist attitudes identified by Edward Said and that political subjection by colonial states has prevented many nations from building the wider information infrastructure - encompassing telecommunications networks, schools and libraries - needed for successful participation in the global economy.

Some of those concerns are encapsulated in Anthony Smith's The Geopolitics of Information (London: Faber 1980), Dan Schiller's paper Ambush on the I-Way: Commoditization on the Electronic Frontier and Mark Alleyne's News Revolution: Political & Economic Decisions About Global Information (New York: St Martins 1997). Schiller's Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System (Cambridge: MIT Press 1999) explores particular themes at more length.

We can unpack particular issues in the 'global infosphere' by examining information production, information flows and information use.

     information flows

Regional disparities are also evident in all advanced economies, contrary to claims during the early 1990s that geography was meaningless and location was dead. For the US there is a succinct discussion in Tendencies & Tensions of the Information Age: The Production & Distribution of Information in the United States (New Brunswick: Transaction 1997) by Jorge Schement & Terry Curtis. Clustering of information production (and of investment) is highlighted in The Geography of the Internet Industry (Oxford: Blackwell 2005) and papers by Matthew Zook noted later in this guide and in works on the information economy. Similar concentrations are evident in Australia, with most publishing, most venture capital investment and most internet servers being located within the three largest cities.

That is partly a consequence of the global information infrastructure, which as we've discussed in the Networks & GII guide, reflects traffic between major markets. There is thus, for example, a lot of cable between New York and London, New York and Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo but little between Lagos and Sao Paulo or Lagos and Kinshasa.

One point of reference is The Global Political Economy of Communication: Hegemony, Telecommunications & the Information Economy (New York: St Martin's 1994) edited by Edward Comer

     information use

[under development]

     quadrants

Much of the debate about information flows has been overly reductionist, characterised by a tension between the North (ie advanced economies) and the South (typically emerging or pre-emergent economies, often considered to be victims of past and current colonialism).

In practice it is possible to identify a range of tensions between and within national/regional economies. Within Europe, for example, there are concerns about production of and access to information across the European Union and its neighbours, and across individual states. Infrastructure - whether in the form of wireless internet, broadband cable, POTS, schools or public libraries - may vary significantly from central Paris or London to a village in Scotland or Andalusia. A farm near Lyons or Belfast may enjoy greater internet access than some urban centres near Bucharest or Skopje, eg because of access charges and the physical presence of infrastructure. Early enthusiasm for visions that digital technology would allow information production to escape from the cities - and more broadly from offices or institutions - appears to be misplaced. We've explored some of the digital divides here.

Although pundits such as Fukuyama have announced the end of the Cold War (and indeed of History), some traditional East-West tensions have remained, evident in for example internet and broadcast censorship within China. Within the 'Western' bloc there's ongoing restrictions on content (through censorship) and access by some groups (eg restrictions on women) in states such as Saudi Arabia.

     responses

Responses to substantive/perceived inequities have taken several forms.

One has been to piggyback information production in other countries. One example has been provision in intellectual property regimes for copying - compensated or otherwise - of pharmaceuticals developed by enterprises in advanced economies, usually with the rationale that Third World consumers cannot afford First World licensing fees. (Critics note that national amour propre means that the governments of such states can usually afford to import current arms technology.)

A more subtle example - sometimes tacitly acknowledged - is for governments to turn a blind eye to large-scale copying of Western software, films, textbooks and other information product. That reflects the inadequacy of government agencies (with strong intellectual property law being negated by weak enforcement) and a sense that an emerging economy's consumers should be able to purchase the desirable products of information colonialists at a price all can afford.

A second national response has been to seek bilateral or multilateral funding from other governments, from businesses or philanthropic bodies for infrastructure development or for human capacity building. Such development has involved traditional aid models of large-scale facilities, high-profile but functionally problematical initiatives such as the telecentre-in-a-shipping-container or more modest support for measures such as provision of books for school/municipal libraries.

Such measures have sometimes failed because they're inappropriate or because provided in isolation. Examples are personal computers in locations without electricity or affordable telecommunications and libraries for schools where teachers are forced to supplement inadequate salaries by selling texts. Larger infrastructure failures are highlighted in works such as William Easterly's The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures & Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge: MIT Press 2001).

A third national response has been to import knowledge by sending selected students overseas in the expectation that they will acquire expertise while studying in institutions in advanced economies and then return to the nation of origin for dissemination of skills to a second generation.

As a corollary, some nations such as China have sought to encourage the return of expatriates through appeals to patriotism and offers of commercial support (typically grants for the establishment/expansion of enterprises, often located within special economic development zones, and substantial tax concessions).

The success of such initiatives has been uneven, reflecting the individual's assessment of personal advantage, the host nation's stance and the 'embeddedness' of concessions. A Nigerian acquaintance for example commented that he'd be able to provide a better life for his family as a taxi driver in Australia than as an Assistant Professor in Lagos. The US has been strikingly more successful than Japan in absorbing students and entrepreneurs from the Third World. Studies of unsuccessful enterprise zones in some emerging economies suggest that returning expatriates have been inhibited by broader restrictions on business - particularly small business in high technology sectors - and concerns about freedoms or access to capital.

A fourth response - arguably the least effective - has been a policy of autarky, with

• restrictions on import of cultural products such as films and magazines (both expensive and contaminated with inappropriate values),
• grants or tax concessions for domestic production of alternative content (evident in ICT initiatives in Brazil and other South American states, such as development of the 'volkscomputer'),
• concentration on acquisition of know-how and hardware in selected sectors (typically relating to armaments rather than public health
• an emphasis on indigenous culture
• lower priority given to 'entertainment' and the production/dissemination of work in the arts and humanities than in industrial disciplines

A final response has been agitation within international fora such as the United Nations General Assembly and World Bank for a new information/economic order. One outcome has been the World Summit on the Information Society, discussed in a more detailed profile here.

That agitation has often involved co-opting nongovernment organisations and international agencies, with for example a convergence between the institutional objectives of particular UN bodies such as the ITU, the ambitions of individual spokespeople (self-appointed or otherwise) and the programming imperatives of media industries.

Assessments of the effectiveness of such initiatives are often subjective. From one perspective the main beneficiaries are service providers (eg revenue for hotels, restaurants and airlines involved in international conferences), particular agencies (whose existence is legitimated) and government bureaucrats and statespeople, rather than the citizens of emerging economies. Proponents of that view suggest that although we have seen a plethora of no doubt heartfelt statements and grand plans, few substantive outcomes are visible ... or likely to be.

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