Communication and Global Capital Accumulation - Essay Example

The globalisation of markets and the requirements of capital are, to a large extent, at the heart of these changes. Globalisation, entailing the removal of barriers to the cross-border flow of capital, has expanded the parameters of markets while simultaneously shrinking them. As Freund and Weinhold (2004) explain, globalisation has made international business, with the associate global capital exchange and generation, the norm rather than the exception. Business firms are no longer limited to their home markets but have expanded far beyond their borders as a direct consequence of globalisation.

Indeed, the home market has become the global market, with the implication being that globalisation has expanded the former and contracted the latter (Freund and Weinhold, 2004). In other words, capital movements effectively obliterated national boundaries and have brought the world into closer contact with one another. The internationalisation of capital and the proliferation of international business relationships has largely been enabled by the Internet, both as a medium of communication and a space for the generation and exchange of capital.

The Internet has not simply facilitated communication but in so doing, it has annihilated the space and time barriers. Space and time, the historical obstacles to the efficient exchange of information between corporations and markets have, according to Choi (2003) been transgressed by the Internet. Its wide application has afforded international business the tools it needs to engage in the global management of its markets and to supervise the international movement of its capital. Available facts indicate that the Internet has afforded companies such as General Motors the opportunity to create a network of suppliers which spans across 100 countries and to do business in most of the world just as it does in its home market.

Further to that, the emergence and proliferation of the Internet as a media for the control, management and generation of capital has contributed to the multiplication of global foreign direct investment figures (Cohen and Prusack, 2005). Within the context of the stated, it is evident that the Internet has not only facilitated international business but it has contributed to the global flow of capital and its increased accumulation, largely because of its inherent capacity to transgress space and time.

The requirements of global capital are not limited to the increased utilisation of the Internet as a business medium but to the redefinition of the very concept of communication. The traditional communication structure, while not obsolete, is increasingly irrelevant. Deetz (2004) explains that communication is no longer limited to the interpersonal and the real world. With the invention of the television and its subsequent entry into practically every home across the world, media communication and cultural scholars maintained that it was the herald of a new communications and cultural age.

This medium, which has inarguably redefined communications and culture, pales in comparison to the Internet. TV transforms individuals into passive recipients of culture and communication while the Internet draws them in as active communication participants and