Another important way in which geographers have contributed is
elucidating the distinction between ‘spaces of flows’ and ‘spaces of
places’. This idea was first touted by Manuel Castells in The Rise
of the Network Society (1996), and we will take up these arguments in
more detail in Chapter 2. Suffice to say here, the spaces of places
(nations, territories, villages) have been challenged by new spaces of
flows where knowledge and other forms of information are transmitted
through electronically based webs and other networks. But ‘spaces
of flows’ have not eradicated places – a ‘world city’, for example, is a
node on a network but it is still a distinctive place (see Plate 1.2). But the
change in relative importance of places and flows tends to collapse scale,
making ‘out there’ more immediate, thereby increasing the velocity of
transactions and their impacts on the ground