The 20th century was witness to probably the most useful and practical technological invention - the computer. As a result of this invention, many of the aspects which once controlled global interaction can be utilized by the push of a button. This technological marvel has changed the face of the globe in previously unthinkable ways. .
How has the invention of the computer affected the economy? In addition to, "the enhancement of telecommunications," and for that matter all technological advancements in the past century, "ha[ve] created the material infrastructure needed for the formation of a global economy, in a movement similar to that which lay behind the construction of the railways and the formation of national markets during the nineteenth century" (Thrift, 31). In other words this technology has created the bases of a business infrastructure that has matured from a 19th century local agricultural labour and trade economy, to the current globalization of a world or global economy.
The 20th century global economy has blurred the lines of the "nation-state" and is now run by transnational corporations (TNCs) (Dicken, 47). What was once known as a local community economy based on common cultural ties and agricultural trade has been transformed by technology into a global economy. Nigel Thrift in Geographies of Global Change describes this as the transformation from a "space of places" to a "space of flows" (Thrift, 29). Furthermore, he defines this "space of flows" to have the following effect:.
It, dominates the historically constructed space of places, as the logic of dominant organizations detaches itself from the social constraints of cultural identities and local societies through the powerful medium of information technologies. (Thrift, 31).
Though this "space", that Thrift refers to, typically depicts satellites and the Internet or World Wide Web, it can also apply to the modernization of modes of transportation (Thrift, 30).
