When Rome set out to build its empire, it did so by constructing roads. The road is the means by which space is stratified, by which the distant is brought together. Cartographers create a geopolitical, militaristic space that functions to outline the pathways of empire. Nomads and barbarians have typically come from the deserts and the forests: the roadless ones. The paths of caravans and raiders is necessarily unprescribed because their armies would be destroyed if they followed the paths of empire. They attack from behind forgotten mountains, come up from under the earth, often even dropping from the skies. These warriors evade the edges laid down by the mapmakers' pens; they make history outside of and against the history made by empire.

The internet has created roads through which capital can flow where none before existed. The telephone line is becoming the most fundamental pathway of capital. From emails, to faxes, to phone calls, and websites, capital increasingly carries out its spectacular regime via the telephone. Increasingly, we are encouraged to consume on the internet and even over the phone, so that the space of spectacularity (where the advertisement, promotion and exhibition of objects takes place) and the space of consumption have lost their distinction. It is no longer of being overwhelmed by television advertisements and rushing off to the store to buy commodities . Rather, as the advertisement flashes before us, we can fill out a form to purchase the spectacle -- the commodity that lies somewhere beyond its digitalized reproduction.