What is for sure is that the way that many of us experience the world is shifting in sometimes dizzying ways and that a revolution in technologies of interaction has played a central role in this (see Table 1.1). Popular notions of what globalization is often misunderstand what geography is both as an entity and an academic discipline, and fail to appreciate how contemporary geographers define central components of their analyses such as space, place, scale and location. The core aim of this book is to illustrate that as the processes of globalization fundamentally alter the way people, commodities and information flow and interact, this creates new and complex geographies. There are two notes of caution that need to be sounded about the ‘shrinking world’ concept immediately. First, the relative distance between some places and people has become greater. For example, the income gap between the poorest and richest countries and peoples has increased over the past fifty years (Potter et al., 2004). Those who are hooked up to the internet may enjoy rapid communications with distant friends who can appear to be round the corner, but the majority who do not have access to such technologies have become relatively more isolated. The fact that ‘shrinking’ technology can drive places apart is illustrated in Map 1.1,