ABSTRACT
Traveling at blinding speed along weightless paths of thin, long, fibers of glass, tiny bits of information are transmitted and received throughout the world billions upon billions of times each second. 1 They bombard the earth with great density in some regions, yet they barely touch ground in others. Impervious to borders, these ephemeral bits cany corporate documents, cultural products, consumer transactions, and countless other forms of communication. The vast and ever-expanding global web of information resides at the center of recent debates on the politics of national identity and the culture of global technology. In these debates, three prominent positions have emerged.
