This is a short comment on the national vs. international, local vs. global,
etc. debate. This strategy debate is as old as the first time two humaniods
took a stick and drew a line in the sand. We have continued to draw the lines
and fight over them. However, there is a new player on the horizon and any
discussion which leaves it out will be doomed to miss the bus.
Social process, whether local-area or wide-area, has always been more or less
constrained by the limites of time and space. One either did or didn't have
power depending on whether or not one could mobilize and coordinate real
resources at specific points in time and space/place. With the growth of the
electronic, our first response has been to realize that we can communicate
and control more easily across the obstacles of time and space. In its first
wave, computer mediated technologies are seen as a "tool", or an extension to
work and organization in the material (actual) world. The only ephemoral
(non-material) player in this process was the impact of organizational
metaphors such as religion and "nation" (as in I am a member of the nation of
XYZ). They helped players situate themselves one against/with the other.
Increasingly, there is work, social process and organizational structure
emerging here (on the networks) in the virtual world. Some are arguing (me
among them) that this virtual world will become as powerful and as real as
the material world with its work, social process and organizational structures.
As that happens, reality will be a combination of what one does in the actual
(material) world and what one does in the virtual (electronic) world. Since
the organizational principles of this virtual world do not conform to the
time/space properties of the material world, this opens up a vast number of
possibilities for social process and socio-economic/political strategies. One
will be able to be both local and global at the same time, or one or the other
depending on the context. The "poles" of strategy will no longer be the black
and white "either/or" but will be a palette of colors and hues producing a
different kind of reality in which we will work.
It is enough to observe that much of the hype around the information highway
is about maintaining global competitiveness, while at the same time realizing
that much of the quality of life at the local level depends in fact on non-
traded goods (health care, fresh water, clean air) and not traded textiles,
autos and TV sets. It is absolutely clear that the same technologies which are
(they say) making global transnationals possible, and global competitiveness
an imparative (they say!) can also be used in the area of non-traded goods
and make the local more viable. It is not clear what all this implies for
strategy, except that local access to local resources (Free-Net initiatives)
are a central element of any democratic agenda.
This is intended as a "thought piece" and not as refined analysis. It takes on
more definition when applied to specific social processes such as health,
education, occupational health and safety, etc.
Sam Lanfranco, Distributed Knowlege Project, York U. < [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
