NATIONS, IDENTITIES, AND GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES
by Mark Poster

Fear and Trembling in the Halls of Power

As a political unit, the nation is facing an ever-expanding set of
challenges. Modern systems of transportation and communication
facilitate global exchanges of commodities, populations and information,
often evading the borders and jurisdictions of the nation state. Faced
with an increasingly interconnected globe, the nation may no longer be
able to sustain its territorial hegemony. Some commentators conclude
that the nation-state has ceased to be a viable political entity,
placing democracy itself in jeopardy. Most observers, however, note
with some trepidation the globalizing trends that put the nation into
question. In this essay I shall briefly examine these trends, look at
the various anxieties provoked by globalizing information flows and
attempt to outline a way of conceptualizing the current situation with
an emphasis on its emancipatory possibilities. Although I will focus on
the anxieties aroused by globalizing trends, I recognize that there are
also great expectations in the scene, from the drooling of free
marketers at the fading away of tariffs and quotas on commodities, to
the broad grin of liberal democrats as dict