recent years these productive goods have themselves increasingly taken a metaphysical form. Industrial goods like oil and steel are produced in massive, effectively fixed facilities, and the goods move by the trainload or shipload. In these respects they resemble the agricultural goods that were the basic measure of wealth in an earlier age. Computer software, in contrast, can be produced on any desktop computer and "shipped" via the Internet. The roles of location and distance are thus annihilated for a growing share of the world's wealth -- and, therefore, for a growing share of its economic and ultimately political power.
New Forms of Society, New Forms of Power
Though new in historical terms, this state of affairs has been taking form for a number of years, long enough for social thinkers to address themselves to the implications. Writers such as Manuel Castells have addressed the broad implications of a "network society" -- or, put another way, a society based primarily on flow rather
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