That is to say, spatial configurations of social life are just as much a matter of basic importance to social theory as are the dimensions of temporality. Today, we are able to communicate with absent others. Thanks to telephone, TV and computer networks, we can be present without moving our bodies. Presence in time is decoupled from presence in space. In the meantime, Giddens' concept of social space has been criticized for not being relative and constructivist enough, for sticking to the traditionalist notion of one space instead of multiple spaces and so on.
Spaces generated by communication technologies have a topological order.
This is true even for Giddens' emptied out, dislocated or virtual spaces. In my talk I'd like to illustrate this thought by presenting some of the basic ordering procedures that can be found in the organization of cyberspace. The Internet's communication technology has generated a global space, the survival of which crucially depends on the maintenance of precise, unambiguous topological orders. As it turns out, the constitution of the virtual electronic world doesn't confine itself to one space, but rests on several interacting spatial orders. Both the telephone and the mail system rely on their own infrastructure.