It Space: Power, Network-economic Characteristics And Wealth Distribution,

Information and communication technology (ICT) is creating a new virtual space, cyberspace. Cyberspace can partially absorb human's activities.This dissertation takes cyberspace as a research object instead of only an element that has an impact on the global politics and world economy. This dissertation starts with an analysis on the resources and power in the cyberspace. By means of the theory of structural power summarized by Susan Strange and embedded power in a space by Michel Foucault, this dissertation analyzes the power structures in cyberspace, which can partially determine the relations among the actors in the space, and also determine the distribution of the relevant wealth.After discussion of the characteristics of networked economy, this dissertation analyzes the competition among the actors for the structural power during the construction of the cyberspace. The actors include nations, nation groups, international organizations, enterprises and network communities. They compete for power in the cyberspace and they struggle for win in the competitions of technical platform and code and technical standards. The resources have been taken as potential power in the field of global politics. The resources in the cyberspace are quite different from the ones in the natural space. They include space resource, time resource, information and knowledge resource, attention resource and the market resource of ICT infrastructure.Chapter Three discusses the economic traits of the ICT industry. The discussion focuses on the network effect of the ICT product, lock-in effect and switch cost, technical standards and compatibility, and the role of the de facto standards in the market competition. The market failure caused by lock-in effect and by lack of supply of public good.In the era of globalization and information, ICT resource is paid more and more attention. In the cyberspace the ICT resource can not be controlled and maintained by nation's borders and military control lines. The technical code can play the role as a control border. By means of the theory of structural power summarized by Susan Strange and embedded power in a space by Michel Foucault, this dissertation analyzes the structural power in the cyberspace, and analyzes the disciplines that the actors received. Chapter Five discusses the U.S. cyber-frontier strategy. The discussion focuses on the structural power that helps the United States gain wealth. By retrospecting the history of the ICT development of the United States, we find that the U.S. government, technical elites and entrepreneurs established a control center of cyberspace and expend it cyber-frontier through GII program, while setting a series of rule of game in the cyberspace. The ICT enterprises of the U.S. play a very important role in gathering the wealth and resources for the United States.The American created the internet and expanded it to the world. The hegemony in the internet gives the U.S. a new tool to acquire new resources and impose its influence in the cyberspace. Because of the ownership of the core infrastructure the U.S. holds the control power of the internet. When the internet becomes a global social infrastructure, the global governance of the internet is demanded. This dissertation discusses the power structure related to the governance of the internet with the conceptual framework of property, power and public choice.The competition and compatibility among the different system platforms in cyberspace lead to the technical development. Chapter Seven discusses the competition between the Galileo platform and GPS platform. The discussion focuses on the motives of the EU for establishing the Galileo platform, and the U.S. reaction to the challenge of the Galileo. Because of the status of monopoly, the GPS loses its momentum for innovation and GPS is reluctant to give better service. The market gives a welcome to the Galileo's competition with the GPS,and also hopes the two platform can reach an compromise for compatibility.The technical code can play the role as a control border. The source code of the software is one of the most important ones. Some proprietary software like Windows helps the Microsoft to become rich and rich by controlling the source code. Chapter Eight discusses the competition between the open source software and proprietary software. The open source movement consisting of hikers provides much free software. It imposes a challenge to proprietary software. The movement helps many developing countries to narrow the digital divide.Technical Standards mean fortune and international power, which is not only ascendant in world high-tech industry competition, but also taken as the advanced modality of industrial management. International competition around technical standards has become gradually the technique, economic, and political dynamic game. Huge industrial scale, innovative research capability, tremendous market and the international bargaining capability are the fundamental conditions of setting technical standards. With fundamental conditions China's national standards strategy has achieved the preliminary effect, but at the same time it is also confronted with power structural limitation in the market and standards-setting system. Therefore, the status of Chinese enterprises in the international technical standards system can be improved gradually through long-term fight in accordance with power structure.Cyberspace consists of technical platforms. The emergence of the cyberspace leads to the competition for power and resource among the actors. The structural powers are connected to the ICT knowledge. The first-mover of the main information technology embedded the power during the development process. These structural powers result in hegemony and unfair play in the cyberspace. Because of the network effect and compatibility, some competition goes along with cooperation and compromise.