ABSTRACT
The plurality of spaces, their dynamics, and the resulting shifts can be shown quite vividly by the example of telegraphy. This technology played a central role in the great intensification of globalization witnessed in the nineteenth century. The telegraph conveyed information as a series of electrical impulses. The fact that data transmission involved electricity either flowing or not flowing along the cable has been interpreted as an early form of binary code. Fanning Island and the Cocos Islands can be understood as laboratories in which the relationships and interactions between these spaces can be rendered particularly visible because in these cases the discrepancy between communicative connectedness and geographical isolation was especially pronounced as a result of the extraordinary role they played in the worldwide telegraph network. Flexible understanding of space enables people to take a more nuanced look at such processes and with that, to be able to depart from our generalizations and from stagy metaphors of the "shrinking-of-the-world" kind.
