Power and Marginality in Cyberspace


'Saskia Sassen Saskia Sassen

Cyberspace is often read as a purely technological event and in that sense as neutral. But cyberspace, like any other space can be inscribed in a multiplicity of ways, some benevolent or enlightening: others, not. For instance, the cyberspaces of finance are spaces where profits are produced and power is thereby constituted. In so far as these technologies strengthen the profit-making capability of finance and make possible the hypermobility of finance capital, they also contribute to the often devastating impacts of the ascendance of finance on other industries, on particular sectors of the population, and on whole economies. Furthermore, we see emerging a powerful dynamic of exclusion: whole localities and whole social classes are likely to be excluded from access to cyberspace. What will this mean? A new technological underclass of places and neighborhoods?