``visualize discontinuous `regions' that might take the spatial form of lattices, archi-
pelagos, hollow rings, or patchworks ... the friction of distance is much less than
it used to be; capital flows as much as human migrations can rapidly create and
re-create profound connections between distant places. As a result, some of the
most powerful sociospatial aggregations of our day simply cannot be mapped as
single, bounded territories ... . The geography of social life in the late twentieth
century has outgrown not only the contours of the postwar world map, but also the
very conventions by which we represent spatial patterns in image and text''