Alert readers of this Blog will have spotted that there is a new link along the top, namely to an essay I have written about Amazon Space.

This piece is an attempt to pull together various themes of international politics and the impact thereon of surging IT-driven integration:

The world has two important spaces. Amazon Space, and Non-Amazon Space.
 
In Amazon Space there is a high probability that the technical infrastructure works consistently well to allow Amazon orders to be made from PDAs/laptops while the buyer is on the move. Plus a high probability that deliveries will be made promptly across that space, with the goods reaching the client in good shape. Not only goods ordered from Amazon, of course.
 
In Non-Amazon Space either the technical infrastructure needed to make Amazon orders reliably and securely is absent or unreliable. And/or deliveries do not appear on time, or at all, or the goods do appear but are damaged.
 
Amazon Space is where the billion people who own the means of production of the word’s ideas now live.
 
Amazon Space is an astonishing unprecedented civilisational achievement. It links people and processes freely and fairly across borders. It allows people at their own pace to spread knowledge and best practice and innovation. It gives a chance to anyone within that space to do things differently.
 
And perhaps the most amazing thing. It rests on a dense network of contracts and understandings between companies and individuals who have never met…
Read on.
Comments/thoughts/refutations welcome, of course.