ИСТИНА

Information revolution of the end of XX – the beginning of XX century and a widespread penetration of the newest information and communication technologies (ICTs) marked the beginning of the Information Age and shrank the geographical space more than ever. Information has become a key resource in the modern postindustrial world, enabled to overcome easily any physical barriers and state boundaries. The global information space has formed. Understanding spatial patterns of information flows and their relationships with socio-economic spatial structures becomes more and more critical in the modern Information Age (Guldmann, 2004). With this aim a study on global information traffic flows’ diffusion in space has been undertaken for different types of ICTs (Internet and telephone) over the last two decades. A special emphasis made on the international information security problem, which is a newest technological challenge. As a result, spatial patterns of information flows revealed for the world regions, as well as a place of BRICS, the USA and other countries in these flows. Indicators developed, and spatial disparities in a level of telecommunicativeness and communicative openness of countries evaluated. The study exposed shifts in geography of the world information flows over the beginning of XXI century. The analysis has shown that the obvious trend of the latest decades is a rise in a share of the international traffic in communicative interactions conducted by the newest ICTs, and a decline in the share of the international traffic for traditional telecommunication technologies. Thus, when moving from traditional to the newest technologies, a spatial scale of information diffusion grows from mostly local to international, and international traffic is constantly migrating from traditional to the newest telecommunications. Conclusions are made about a significant decentralization in a regional distribution of the Internet information flows over the beginning of XXI century, as well as a diminishing role of the USA and a rise of BRICS countries in the Internet traffic governance. The study contributes to the geography of innovations and technological challenges in terms of the modern information and communication technologies and their traffic flows diffusion in space.