ABSTRACT
There has been much discussion of the notion that ICTs have played a central part in the processes associated with globalization. The use of the Internet has transformed the ways in which people interact, with flows of information and communication taking place across the world at ever increasing speeds. However, it is also possible to argue that, rather than being an exogenous force of change, the emergence of such technologies has been a direct response to the needs of those in power, notably businesses and the world’s dominant states, to increase their control of the world economy. Castells (2000) has argued that these processes have ushered in a profoundly new Information Age. He suggests that
Towards the end of the second millennium of the Christian era several events of historical significance transformed the social landscape of human life. A technological revolution, centred around information technologies, began to reshape, at accelerated pace, the material basis of society. Economies throughout the world have become globally interdependent, introducing a new form of relationship between economy, state, and society, in a system of variable geometry (Castells 2000: 1).
