Global Local Politics Final Paper

Globalization is a powerful phenomenon in the world today. It transforms local or regional phenomena into global ones and acts as a process by which people across the globe are unified and function together as a single society. This process involves a mixture of economic, socio-cultural, political, and technological forces. The internet is a powerful connective tool that is at the forefront of globalization and shapes it in salient ways, such as through a broad and global information exchange that augments our global knowledge economy. As such, this paper argues that the internet, rather than real personal relations, now drives globalization, which affects diverse individuals, companies, and countries, and socially deprives the global landscape by facilitating shallow, fleeting and impersonal electronic interactions that exclude real personal relations. Indeed, while driving globalization, the internet deprives peoples of their traditional cultures and dehumanizes the integrated global landscape through ever more mechanical interactions via a vast web of loosely connected individuals. In order to support this argument, this paper begins by approaching globalization from a historical standpoint and then discusses its three main dimensions: economic, political, and social-cultural. These will help us more clearly understand globalization as a multi-faceted phenomenon that was driven through personal relations before the rise of the internet. Second, this paper specifically details the internet, which is the primary technological tool of globalization, and how it impacts globalization. In so doing, this paper shall discuss the ways by which the internet, rather than meaningful personal relations, drives globalization and dehumanizes the global landscape. In so doing, it is changing, or evolving, to meet current global needs with social networking utilities and chat rooms, which keep people online and disengaged from real interactions with their fellows. Truly, offline, personal, face-to-face interactions and hand-written correspondences are more often being replaced with chat room banter and e-mails that contribute to our new, shallow, mechanical, and ever more faceless global environment. Since World War II, globalization has primarily been the result of planning by politicians to breakdown borders hampering trade to augment prosperity, develop international relations through trade, promote interdependence of peoples and nations, and decrease the chance of future wars. The work of these politicians led to the Bretton Woods conference, an agreement by the world’s leading politicians to lay down the framework for international commerce and finance, and the founding of several international institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) intended to oversee the processes of globalization (QUOTE). Through such initiatives, a more integrated world was aimed for. These internationally-minded leaders of globalization had no way of knowing that technology, not personal relations, would soon accelerate the phenomenon they started. Although not a new phenomenon, globalization’s pace accelerates now through the incorporation of a host of new technologies. Globalization began to take shape and advance in the late nineteenth century, but, due to the inward looking policies pursued by a number of countries in order to protect their respective industries, its spread slowed during the period from the start of the First World War until the third quarter of the twentieth century. Up to this point, globalization was shaped by a vast network of personal relations that were developed through face-to-face interactions, telephone conversations, and written correspondences. Technologies did not yet exist that could facilitate purely electronic forms of communication, such as e-mails, which now drives globalization forward by enhancing the connectivity of the global community. As technology advanced, globalization began to take a firmer hold upon the global landscape. Indeed, the pace of globalization picked up rapidly during the fourth quarter of the twentieth century—for example, this acceleration is demonstrated in that world exports rose from 8.5% of gross world product in 1970 to 16.1% of gross world product in 2001 (QUOTE). Much of this was thanks to technologies that allowed for new forms of interaction that could connect people thousands of miles apart for purposes that include trade. The internet is one such connective technology. Before this powerful technological tool is explained, however, it is important to better understand the underpinnings of globalization through how it is popularly defined. The term “globalization” is defined in myriad ways. In its literal sense, it is the process of changing local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be understood as a process by which people across the globe are unified and function together as a single society—albeit through person-to-person interactions or faceless connections using modern technologies. This process espouses a mixture of economic, technological, socio-cultural and political forces. More often than not, globalization is regularly used to refer to economic globalization, or integration of national economies into the international economy. This is accomplished through trade, migration, capital flows, foreign direct investment, and the dissemination of technology (QUOTE). Reducing and removing barriers between national borders facilitates the flow of goods and services (exports plus imports as a proportion of national income or per capita of population), labor and people (net migration rates; inward or outward migration flows, weighted by population), capital (inward or outward direct investment as a proportion of national income or per head of population), and technology (international research & development flows). These are the main flows that characterize globalization (QUOTE). Meanwhile, globalization’s three

main dimensions are economic, social, and political. As we will soon see, these lead globalization to affect the global community in myriad ways. The economic dimension of globalization is important and leads to several important definitions. Tom G. Palmer defines globalization as “the diminution or elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result” (Find QUOTE). As well, Herman E. Daly argues that sometimes the terms internationalization and globalization are used interchangeably but there is a slight formal difference. The term "internationalization" refers to the importance of international trade, relations, treaties, and other such activities that link peoples of one nation to peoples of another nation for business activities (Find QUOTE). On the other hand, Thomas L. Friedman defines globalization as “the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before” (p. 9). He examines the impact of the ‘flattening’ of the globe, and argues that globalized trade, outsourcing, supply-chaining, and political forces have changed the world permanently, for both better and worse. He also argues that the pace of globalization, or the growing integration of economies and societies around the world, is quickening (as was highlighted before) and will continue to have a growing impact on business organization and practice, due especially to technologies that automate and accelerate business processes that would otherwise require higher (and slower) levels of human interaction. In the context of economics, it is important to note globalization’s extensive impact on the world of business. In a business environment marked by globalization, the world seems to shrink as real personal relations are eliminated through automated processes of electronic simulation. Now, businesses halfway around the world can exert as great an impact on a business as one right down the street because of faceless online communications. It is of note that “finance, accounting, internet consulting, and law firms are critical to support other global businesses, and have been identified as critical markers of the knowledge driven economy and of globalization (Florida, 2002). International migration is a classic globalizing process” (Clark, Sassen, p. 385). Businesses are interconnected globally on a new, before unimaginable level, and migration to economic hot spots is spurred by the pursuit of opportunities for profit maximization in this interconnected world. By espousing this interconnection, globalization is “an international system—the dominant international system that replaced the Cold War system after the fall of the Berlin Wall…We are now in the new international system of globalization.” (p. 7). Within this system, internet access and e-commerce businesses have brought small-scale coops in the Third World nations into the same arena as lucrative large-scale businesses in the industrialized world. Because of this international system, the world has moved from a more vertical (command and control) value creation model to a more horizontal (connect and collaborate) model. “This affects everything—how communities and companies define themselves, where companies and communities stop and start, how individuals balance their different identities as consumers, employees, shareholders, and citizens, and what role government has to play” (p. 201). In this new international system of globalization, the masses are becoming more and more faceless as the internet functions as a primary source of communication and a tool that both drives globalization and replaces personal relations with online networks of often meaningless contacts and automated utilities. As can be seen, globalization’s new techno-social phenomenon runs deep and has an impact on the global landscape. Evidence of the social impact of globalization can be viewed in our daily lives and the rise of a new techno-social phenomenon. We are being influenced and disconnected from others by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers and fast food with MTV, Macintosh and McDonald's, forcing nations into one commercially homogeneous, and often dehumanized, global network. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, globalization grew to dominance. This was due to the peace that came with the end of the Cold War, decline of many tariffs and barriers to trade, rise of global trade, expansion of education, decline of agricultural and industrial work, rise of professional, service-oriented, and technically-based jobs, “where computers and machines replace people for basic tasks,” and “new modes of communication (Internet, fiber-optic cables, fax, digitization)” (Clark, Culture is on the Rise). These factors led to the integration of an ever more dehumanized global community, where the social lives of individuals around the world are more and more tied to technology. In this world, a new techno-social phenomenon has emerged that often replaces traditional, face-to-face social interactions that would augment personal social relations. This techno-social phenomenon marries the social lives of individuals around the globe to numerous technologies and services, such as personal computers, the internet, and online social utilities—e.g. social networking websites and chat services. Technology and socializing now regularly go hand-inhand. Globalization is being driven and accelerated by these online connections, which are facilitated by technologies that synthesize and even automate what were purely human activities that required engagement with others—i.e., personal relations. Because of the quick advance of technology, the onset of the techno-social phenomenon occurred more quickly

than we could comprehend while buttressed by the fast flow of globalization. This is all due to advances in new technologies (communication technology specifically), and “today the Internet, cell phones and E-mail have become essential tools that many people, and not only in developed countries, cannot imagine living without” (p. 15). We have a new faceless, integrated world now that an era of technology-driven globalization has taken the helm. As a force that steers toward integration, Americanization and globalization often go hand-in-hand in this new, fast-paced, technologyoriented world. Integration is a key term that defines globalization. While it draws toward transforming the international landscape into a unified whole, globalization incorporates its own dominant culture that melds cultures with its own. Let us understand culture to be patterns of human activity and the symbols that give these activities significance. It is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they maintain, and activities they pursue. Globalization merges different cultures and makes them into something different. As Erla Zwingle, from the National Geographic article titled “Globalization” states, “When cultures receive outside influences, they ignore some and adopt others, and then almost immediately start to transform them” (QUOTE). McDonald’s was once only an American favorite. Now it is a global enterprise with 31,000 locations worldwide. This restaurant is just one example of food going global. Truly, the culture of globalization “tends to be homogenizing to a certain degree. Culturally speaking, globalization has tended to involve the spread (for better or worse) of Americanization—from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey Mouse” (p. 9). Integration in terms of globalization with its hyper-connective characteristic calls for the spread of Americanization far and wide, which is more and more often broadcast in media technology. Cultural globalization, driven by media technology and the worldwide marketing of Western cultural industries, was understood at first as a process of homogenization, as the global domination of American culture came at the expense of traditional diversity. However, a contrasting trend became evident in the rise of movements protesting globalization and giving new momentum to the defense of local social relations, or a sense of community, uniqueness, individuality, and identity, which are losing ground in today’s new world. Adopting globalization’s culture has been the norm, although this comes at the expense of unique local qualities. People lose part of their traditional identities and sense of community as the World Wide Web entangles them and as the process of globalization levels the global landscape with American culture. Various business and government entities from around the world also adopt American political and economic standards and combine to form an integral whole through a vast network of interdependencies under the fabric of Americanization, which itself relates to high American political clout and the growth of its shops, markets and objects as they are being brought into other countries. With Americanization also came the popularization of new technologies that not only spread American media but also turned socializing into something electronic by the severance of personal relations formed through person-to-person interaction. So, in sum, globalization relates to a multilateral political world and to the increase of objects, markets, technologies that dehumanize personal relations and spread of Americanization, and so on into other countries. Here “Globalization has also had a crucial political dimension: namely, the American-led worldwide promotion of free elections and democratization” (WORLD ON FIRE, p. 123). Electronic media facilitates this quite well. With globalization, American democratic aims are met thanks in part to tools of mass communication, such as television and the internet. To be sure, “That markets and democracy swept the world simultaneously is not a coincidence” (WORLD ON FIRE, p. 123). It is because of technology that the global landscape is becoming more economically, politically, and socially homogenized and Americanized. A common political and economic consensus has emerged around the world. “Markets and democracy, working hand in hand, would transform the world into a community of modernized, peace-loving nations. In the process, ethnic hatred, extremist fundamentalism, and other ‘backward’ aspects of underdevelopment would be swept away” (WORLD ON FIRE, p. 123). Truly, the global landscape is being homogenized by globalization and Americanization. Politics and business would never be the same again once globalization and all of its advances and stagnations—primarily in the interpersonal social realm—were introduced. Regarding politics, or the third realm of globalization, a New Political Culture has arisen. Within the realm of politics, a New Political Culture has risen to dominance in the wake of globalization. The New Political Culture “transcends the older debates about capitalism versus socialism, and left versus right. Instead of old conflicts of rich and poor (or in Korea the two regions) we see new, issue specific concerns, like feminism and environmental protection and many more, sometimes around internet groups. In contrast to hierarchy and tradition of the past, we see more individualism and egalitarianism…” (Clark, Culture is on the Rise). In many ways, the internet helps to facilitate this need for individualism, especially with sites such as MySpace and Facebook—these globally popular sites certainly allow for expression, yet they also take away the personal, human element of socialization by keeping individuals disengaged with the vanishing real social world and glued to the internet to electronically communicate with

others who they may not know whatsoever outside of online profiles. We see its contours in four areas: finance, communication, politics, and consumption. Here the “classic Left-Right dimension has been transformed, social and fiscal/economic issues are explicitly distinguished, social issues have risen in salience relative to fiscal/economic issues,” issue politics and broader citizen participation has risen, hierarchical political organizations have declined, the welfare state has been questioned, and market individualism and social individualism have grown (Clark, Culture is on the Rise). Individualism has grown at the cost of the group and tradition as globalization took a strong hold on the global landscape during the last few decades with the rise of new technologies and advances in media. Here the views of the New Political Culture began and continue to prevail among the young, educated, and affluent individuals and societies, which have turned from tradition toward the individual. Individuals of such societies introspectively search for certainty as they pursue what they think is worth living for and define their identities. Considering its three main dimensions (social, political, and economic), globalization affects the global community in myriad ways. Globalization has various aspects which affect the world in several different ways. These include the following: 1) Economic - realization of a global common market, based on the freedom of exchange of goods and capital. The interconnectedness of these markets (a product of technology’s connective power), however meant that an economic collapse in any one given country could not be contained. Hence the financial crisis of 2008 spelt trouble for nations the world over. 2) Political - some use "globalization" to mean the creation of a world government, or cartels of governments (e.g. WTO, World Bank, and IMF) which regulate the relationships among governments and guarantees the rights arising from social and economic globalization. Politically, the United States has enjoyed a position of power among the world powers; in part because of its strong and wealthy economy. For this reason, globalization entails the spread of American values. 6) Informational - increase in information flows between geographically remote locations. Arguably this is a technological change with the advent of fiber-optic communications, satellites, and increased availability of telephone and internet. 6) Language - the most popular language is English. About 75% of the world's mail, telexes, and cables are in English. Approximately 60% of the world's radio programs are in English. About 90% of all Internet traffic uses English. Globalization means the spread of the English language. 7) Competition - Survival in the new global business market calls for improved productivity and increased competition. Due to the market becoming worldwide, companies in various industries have to upgrade their products and use technology skillfully in order to face increased competition. 8) Cultural - growth of cross-cultural contacts; advent of new categories of consciousness and identities which embodies cultural diffusion, the desire to increase one's standard of living and enjoy foreign products and ideas, adopt new technology and practices, and participate in a "world culture". 9) Social - development of the system of non-governmental organizaitons as main agents of global public policy, including humanitarian aid and developmental efforts. 10) Technical Development of a global telecommunications infrastructure and greater transborder data flow, using such technologies as the Internet, communication satellites, submarine fiber optic cable, and wireless telephones. This technological component is vitally important in that it drives globalization. Globalization is driven by technology, not so much real personal relations. Its technologies enable “individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is enabling the world to reach into individuals, corporations and nation-states farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before” (p. 9). Speedy connections are essential to globalization, where business demands must often be met immediately. Thus, globalization has a strong technological infrastructure that propels it and everyone caught in it forward into ever more connectivity. This infrastructure includes “computerization, miniaturization, digitization, satellite communications, fiber optics and the Internet, which reinforce its defining perspective of integration” (p. 9). Technology is perhaps the most visible aspect of globalization’s influence and advance. It is its driving force. Communication technology has revolutionized our information systems and transformed our lives. As globalization advances, the global community sits in front of television and computer screens ever more frequently. Broadcast media and the internet now dominate the lives of hundreds of millions. Globalization tends to be most perceptible and observable in nearly every facet of modern life mainly due to the emergence of internet technology specifically. New needs have emerged in its wake. According to Friedman, “Globalization 2.0 was the era of mainframe computing, which was very vertical—command-and-control oriented, with companies and their individual departments tending to be organized in vertical silos” (p. 178). There were more personal relations and less automation during this era. We have advanced much since. Now we are in the era of “Globalization 3.0.” This is based upon what Friedman’s ten flatteners, and in particular “the combination of the PC, the microprocessor, the Internet, and fiber optics, flipped the playing field from largely top-down to more side to side” (p. 178). New business practices and needs have emerged in this environment. These require hyper-connectivity and

immediate transactions that would decades ago require much more personal interactions—globalization cannot be driven by personal relations now, since they are too slow for a world that demands rapid speed. Our new technologies certainly “naturally fostered and demanded new business practices, which were less about command and control and more about connecting and collaborating horizontally (p. 178).” Given its speed, Internet technology drives this new era of globalization. It is Friedman’s “triple convergence—of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration—that…is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty-first century” (p. 181). The new players are all those who have access to the Internet, the new playing field is the digital community, and online processes and interactions are now influencing economics and politics across the global landscape—offline and online, that is. Truly, the Internet is the necessary characteristic component of the globalization system. It allows for a new era of globalization (Globalization 3.0). As has been observed and will be further discussed, the internet allows us to connect with others in ways we never before could. With e-mail and chat utilities, globalization’s era of personal relations has become replaced with an era that is more frequently impersonal and automated. The globalization system espouses wide-scale, swift integration first and foremost. To achieve this system of integration the Internet comes to the foreground. The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. The internet is globally integrating and amalgamating the people of the world. It helps to break down cultural boundaries with its torrential information flow and connects people in ways through which they have never been connected before. The advent of the Internet in its unquantifiable shape and form has over the past decade provided a common platform upon which countries from all corners of the Earth are able to communicate and share information rapidly. It was the creation of the Department of Defense that built it in case of a nuclear attack, but its primary use has been during peace. Friedman talks about how the Internet has been the great equalizer. A good example of this is Google. Whether you are a wealthy businessman with a high speed Internet connection or a poor person in India with access to an Internet café, you have the same basic access to research information. The Internet puts an enormous amount of information at our fingertips. Essentially, all of the information on the Internet is available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Furthermore, it helps the world become an ever more interwoven place. It connects individuals around the world and spreads Americanization and the English language far and wide. It has blown down cultural boundaries around the entire world. With the Internet, people can easily access someone half way across the world. Anyone can connect in this new and frequently impersonal digital environment, where you can be whomever you would like if you are an online social networker. Truly, face-to-face interactions are not vital as they used to be. Even if language is a barrier, then websites like Flickr, a photo sharing site, lets people from Singapore and Germany alike communicate without words and share their faces with the faceless global community. The Internet in essence makes the world a smaller, more impersonal place and has provided an opportunity to build a global information infrastructure that links together the world's telecommunications and computer networks. It also has transformed the global landscape and provides endless margin of information discovery. Along with other prominent social theorists and sociologists, Manuel Castells (1998, 2000) has written at length about the changes undergone in the advanced industrialized nations of the world over the past three decades. Importantly, during this period of time we have moved from industrial societies to post-industrial societies, or what Castells terms ‘informational societies’. Industrial societies were the outcome of intellectual and technological revolutions of the late 18th and 19th centuries, respectively, which led to advances in the production of material goods. By contrast, the third great intellectual and technological revolution has taken us to a ‘social organization in which information generation, processing and transmission become fundamental sources of production and power because of new technological conditions emerging in this historical period’ (Castells, 2000: 21). The lynchpin of this revolution has been the advent of advanced information technology. As Castells notes, technological advances in the post world war era, leading to the inventions of transistors (1947) and integrated circuits (1957), paved the way for the invention in 1971 of the microprocessor or the computer chip, the basis of computers and information technology, which has yet to find its limits as regards the capacity for storage and access of information. The internet, that digital driver of globalization, was spawned from this third technological revolution. More people are connected through the Internet than could be through only a web of personal relations. No phenomenon other than the Internet is now more indicative of the move away from the national toward the international and from real social relations to impersonal digital interactions. It both enriches and deprives our lives. Despite there being little consensus on the definition of globalization and no agreement at all on whether it is a beneficial or malevolent force in the world, there is one aspect of the phenomenon on which there is no dissent. All commentators agree that globalization is characterized by unprecedented flows of information, exchanges among different groups and

networks that transcend the local and national. Since it facilitates this information flow, the internet is the tool of globalization par excellence. Now, since the threats and opportunities of countries and companies now from who they are connected to, the globalization system requires the internet to rapidly facilitate this connection. In so doing, it characterizes the globalization system. As Friedman asserts, the “globalization system is also characterized by a single word: the Web,” and, “…in the globalization system we reach for the Internet, which is a symbol that we are all increasingly connected and nobody is quite in charge.” (p. 8). The Internet furthers the globalization system as a “dynamic ongoing process” that connects individuals, companies, and countries in one geographical location to others in locations across the globe. As a sign of the advance of globalization, the Internet’s user base is growing steadily. The Internet, that integral tool of globalization, is increasing in popularity. For example, “Between 2000 and 2004, total global Internet usage grew 125 percent, including 186 percent in Africa, 209 percent in Latin America, 124 percent in Europe, and 105 percent in North America, according to Nielsen/NetRatings” (p. 198). In 1998, 57% of those with access to the Internet were North American, and English language speakers constituted a large percentage of the other geographical groups. In 2003, the proportions had changed dramatically. Only about 30% of those online were resident in North America. Another 30% were in Asia. Europe accounted for another 30%. When we started the research in September 2002, an NUA internet survey calculated that one in five of the world’s population had access to the Internet and suggested that, in some parts of the world, (e.g. Africa and south America) use was increasing at a rate of 20% per year. More and more people are becoming connected to the global landscape through the Internet as the cogs of globalization turn and intertwine one individual after another in both the developed and undeveloped nations. Truly, the advance of the Internet is indicative of globalization’s advance. With its connective capabilities, the internet is the tool par excellence of globalization. The Internet has become only within the last decade the essential connective tool that drives globalization. Now, in this new world of integration, “We are moving into a world where more and more communication is in the form of bits traveling through cyberspace and stored on servers located all over the world” (p. 218). This path to electronic connections and relations, which stand in contrast to personal ones, was paved by various means and relatively recently. As Friedman asserts, “It is my contention that the opening of the Berlin Wall, Netscape, work flow, outsourcing, offshoring, open-sourcing, insourcing, supply-chaining, in-forming, and the steroids amplifying them all reinforced one another, like complementary goods” (p. 176). These drastically impacted the globalization phenomenon quickly. In sum, “They just needed time to converge and start to work together in a complementary, mutually enhancing fashion. That tipping point arrived sometime around the year 2000” (p. 176). This convergence was sweeping. It brought about an entirely new global landscape that is integrated by digital rather than physical processes. “The net result of this convergence was the creation of a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration—the sharing of knowledge and work—in real time, without regard to geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language” (p. 176). That future is now, and, as said before, image-sharing sites can engage anyone and everyone regardless of language. Anyone who can access the Internet can be immediately connected and integrated into the global playing field. Because of the internet’s importance for connecting and integrating the global playing field of individuals and countries alike, “in globalization, the most frequently asked question is: ‘To what extent are you connected to everyone?’ The second most frequently asked question is: ‘How fast is your modem?’” (p. 10). With its tech-heavy dependency, globalization tends to revolve around Moore’s Law. This states that the computing power of silicon chips doubles every eighteen to twenty-four months, while the price cuts in half. Globalization “has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people…it has simultaneously wired the world into networks…it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any time in history” (p. 14). The internet allowed “a whole new group of people, several billion, in fact, [to walk] out into the playing field from China, India, and the former Soviet Empire. Thank to the new flat world, and its new tools, some of them were quickly able to collaborate and compete directly with everyone else” (p. 175). Among these, a few super-empowered individuals arose. The technology (including the Internet) of globalization has made it much easier to move information around the world. There is no doubt that the Internet has accelerated the speed of transmission and thus made the world smaller. It is much easier for people around the world to access information and share it with others in this global information infrastructure. Those who address the issue of globalization also believe that it diminishes the relevance of borders, territorial governments, and geography. Thomas Friedman believes that the Internet and other technologies are flattening the world regardless of geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language. In one sense, this is true. The lower costs of

moving information and the sheer amount of information exchanged on the Internet have made it more difficult for governments to suppress information they do not like (Goldsmith & Wu, p. 72). The explosive growth of blogs and web pages have provided a necessary outlet for opinion and information. It is also true that there has been some self-governing behavior on the Internet. Friedman, for example, describes eBay as a "self-governing nation-state—the V.R.e., the Virtual Republic of eBay." The CEO of eBay even says, "People will say that eBay restored my faith in humanity—contrary to a world where people are cheating and don't give people the benefit of the doubt" (Andrews). But it also true that territorial governments work with eBay to arrest and prosecute those who are cheaters or who use the website in illegal ways. And it also relies on a banking system and the potential of governmental prosecution of fraud. Governments have been able to exert their influence and authority over the Internet. They have been able to use the political process to alter or block information coming into their country and have been able to shape the Internet in ways that the early pioneers of the Internet did not foresee. Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, in their book, Who Controls the Internet?, describe the various ways foreign governments have exercised their authority. For example, the People's Republic of China requires Yahoo to filter materials that might be harmful or threatening to Party rule. Yahoo is essentially an Internet censor for the Communist party (Wolverton). Goldsmith and Wu believe that those talking about the force of globalization often naively believe that countries will be powerless in the face of globalization and the Internet. "When globalization enthusiasts miss these points, it is usually because they are in the grips of a strange technological determinism that views the Internet as an unstoppable juggernaut that will overrun the old and outdated determinants of human organization” (Andrews). There is still a legitimate function for government even in this new world of cyberspace. The Internet has no borders; it is an arena where the practice of entering and exiting a nation-state does not exist. Contrary to the perceived assumption that the Internet will shape governments and move us quickly toward globalization, there is good evidence to suggest that governments will in many ways shape the Internet. As well, since the Internet has no borders, it is an arena where the practice of entering and exiting a nation-state does not exist. In a postmodern world characterized by global capitalism and electronic mediation, the Internet substitutes the modern nation–state as an arena for the maintenance of cultural distinctiveness. The exponential growth and global expansion of the Internet has led many people to believe that the Internet is ushering in a new era, the information age, and a new social form, the information society. It serves as a zone of transportation, moving items such as symbolic capital, cultural metaphors and personal communication. By equating the development of new information technologies with the evolution of a new informational social order and New Political Culture, these notions reflect the primacy awarded to science and technology in representations of modernity. From an anthropological perspective, this visionary belief in technology-induced progress is instructive of the extent to which technological development is a result of culturally mediated social agency. And it is the ways in which different actors interpret the meaning of the Internet that this monograph is concerned with, the characteristics of which are analyzed in terms of the broader processes of modernization and globalization. The impact of internet on globalization has both positive and negative aspects. The positive impact of the internet technology on globalization include the modernization and improvement in the global economy and business sector on a worldwide basis. In a postmodern world characterized by global capitalism and electronic mediation, the Internet substitutes the modern nation–state as an arena for the maintenance of cultural distinctiveness. Thus, because electronic media like the Internet can simulate and transmit content, it can play a key part in the proliferation of global capitalism. On the other hand, businesses improve their global competitiveness and productivity with more efficient electronic transaction processing and instant access to information. The Internet is impacting the way that services are bought, sold, and delivered, altering relationships among clients, firms, and employees and speeding the globalization of the consulting industry. There can be seen a better relationship between the clients and the firms through internet which is globally seen all over the world. Instead of face to face meetings the clients can easily deal with the big firms and industries via internet and thus developing a firm client relationship. With the advent of the internet technology work in the foreign countries is more available and accessible because the domestic laws are not as rigorous as they once were, thus assisting in the global nature of the business and allowing new consulting firms to establish a presence in countries that was once restricted. New information and communication technologies (ICT) as well as radically changing international political and regulatory environments reshaped the nature of management consulting. It was during this period that ICT took center stage for global management consulting firms. The market is now more competitive with consumers having greater choices. As there is a positive impact of internet on globalization there can be seen a negative impact of internet on globalization as well. While the interdependence and the internet technological advancement have increased in some parts of the world,

this is not true in the vast majority of the developing world, the less developed countries, and the third world. In this case "Global" cannot be regarded as "Universal". Although a small number of people in the developing world may have access to the internet and truly live in the "global village", the large majority of the population in these countries does not have access to the internet technology. Despite the rapid globalization of the internet, the less developed countries cannot benefit as much as those of the developed countries in economic as well as in political institutions. The globalization of internet technology in the developing countries typically is a one way proposition: the people do not control any of the information; they only receive it. It is also true that worldwide the ability to control or generate broadcasts rests in the hands of the tiny minority. This shows that in these countries the internet technology generally does not have a neutral application. The placement of the internet technology in developing countries often causes social costs, as well as costs in the form of urbanization, employment displacement, and the "digital divide." Furthermore, the Internet is yet one more element in the division of the world into the haves and have nots.7 He reminds us that the Internet remains an elite activity. Access to electricity, phone lines, computer hardware and education for literacy are not within the reach of many millions in the developing world. These basic facts should rein in too optimistic a view of the global reach of the new communication technologies. There can be seen specific and particular risks in the global environment because the gain in power from the technoeconomic progress is rapidly being overshadowed. Risks in this sense can be viewed as the probability of harm arising from technological and economic change. Hazards linked to industrial production, for example, can quickly spread beyond the immediate context in which they are generated. Although the current globalization system has different attributes, rules, incentives, and characteristics, but the system is as pervasive as the Cold War system. In order to create a balance in the application of the internet technology it must adhere to the specific standards. The internet technology no matter where it is applied, can only be understood and valued in relation to the social group that creates or uses it, because every model of society and development conceives of and uses a different kind of technology, which should neither give priority to community action nor to the local necessities. Thus the internet both has positive as well as negative effects on globalization and they play equally an important part in the financial and economic status of a specific country. The negative impact on the globalization can be reduced if an equilibrium and balance is created and developmental techniques and schemes of information technology are introduced in the less developing countries so that they may progress and pace forward in the 21st century.

Goldsmith and Wu, Who Controls the Internet? Edmund L. Andrews, "Germany Charges Compuserve Manager," New York Times, 17 Apr. 1997. Troy Wolverton and Jeff Pelline, "Yahoo to charge auction fees, ban hate materials," CNet News.com, 2 Jan. 2001,

The Internet The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available servers and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory. The same connection allows that computer to send information to servers on the network; that information is in turn accessed and potentially modified by a variety of other interconnected computers.

Creation The USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as ARPA, in February 1958 to regain a technological lead.[2][3] ARPA created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to further the research of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which had networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. J. C. R. Licklider was selected to head the IPTO, and networking as a potential unifying human revolution. Licklider moved from the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University to MIT in 1950, after becoming interested in information technology. At MIT, he served on a committee that established Lincoln Laboratory and worked on the SAGE project. In 1957 he became a Vice President at BBN, where he bought the first production PDP-1 computer and conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing. At the IPTO, Licklider got Lawrence Roberts to start a project to make a network, and Roberts based the technology on the work of Paul Baran,[4] who had written an exhaustive study for the U.S. Air Force that recommended packet switching (as opposed to circuit switching) to make a network highly robust and survivable. After much work, the first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA and SRI (later SRI International) in Menlo Park, California, on October 29, 1969. The ARPANET was one of the "eve" networks of today's Internet. Following on from the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network service. In the UK, this was referred to as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. The X.25 packet switching standard was developed in the CCITT (now called ITU-T) around 1976. X.25 was independent of the TCP/IP protocols that arose from the experimental work of DARPA on the ARPANET, Packet Radio Net and Packet Satellite Net during the same time period. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first description of the TCP protocols during 1973 and published a

paper on the subject in May 1974. Use of the term "Internet" to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated in December 1974 with the publication of RFC 675, the first full specification of TCP that was written by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine, then at Stanford University. During the next nine years, work proceeded to refine the protocols and to implement them on a wide range of operating systems. The first TCP/IP-based wide-area network was operational by January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols. In 1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of the NSFNET, a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone using computers called "fuzzballs" by their inventor, David L. Mills. The following year, NSF sponsored the conversion to a higher-speed 1.5 megabit/second network. A key decision to use the DARPA TCP/IP protocols was made by Dennis Jennings, then in charge of the Supercomputer program at NSF. The opening of the network to commercial interests began in 1988. The US Federal Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET to the commercial MCI Mail system in that year and the link was made in the summer of 1989. Other commercial electronic e-mail services were soon connected, including OnTyme, Telemail and Compuserve. In that same year, three commercial Internet service providers (ISP) were created: UUNET, PSINet and CERFNET. Important, separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged with, the Internet include Usenet and BITNET. Various other commercial and educational networks, such as Telenet, Tymnet, Compuserve and JANET were interconnected with the growing Internet. Telenet (later called Sprintnet) was a large privately funded national computer network with free dial-up access in cities throughout the U.S. that had been in operation since the 1970s. This network was eventually interconnected with the others in the 1980s as the TCP/IP protocol became increasingly popular. The ability of TCP/IP to work over virtually any pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth, although the rapid growth of the Internet was due primarily to the availability of commercial routers from companies such as Cisco Systems, Proteon and Juniper, the availability of commercial Ethernet equipment for local-area networking, and the widespread implementation of TCP/IP on the UNIX operating system.

Growth Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost two decades, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organisation for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW, patterned after HyperCard and built using the X Window System. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic, technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word Internet had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its use as a synecdoche in reference to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such as FidoNet, have remained separate). During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100% per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997.[5] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the nonproprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network. [6] Using various statistics, AMD estimated the population of internet users to be 1.5 billion as of January 2009.[7] The Internet has made possible entirely new forms of social interaction, activities and organizing, thanks to its basic features such as widespread usability and access. Social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace have created a new form of socialization and interaction. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of items to their personal pages, to indicate common interests, and to connect with others. It is also possible to find a large circle of existing acquaintances, especially if a site allows users to utilize their real names, and to allow communication among large existing groups of people. Sites like meetup.com exist to allow wider announcement of groups which may exist mainly for face-to-face meetings, but which may have a variety of minor interactions over their group's site at meetup.org, or other similar sites.

Globalization and the Internet Written by Kerby Anderson

Introduction More than one billion people use the Internet and benefit from the vast amount of information that is available to anyone who connects. But any assessment of the Internet will show that it has provided both surprising virtues and unavoidable vices. Contrary to the oft-repeated joke, Al Gore did not invent the Internet. It was the creation of the Department of Defense that built it in case of a nuclear attack, but its primary use has been during peace. The Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency created a primitive version of the Internet known as ARPAnet. It allowed researchers at various universities to collaborate on projects and conduct research without having to be in the same place.

The first area network was operational in the 1980s, and the Internet gained great popularity in the 1990s because of the availability of web browsers. Today, due to web browsers and search engines, Internet users in every country in the world have access to vast amounts of online information. The Internet has certainly changed our lives. Thomas Friedman, in his book The World is Flat, talks about some of these changes.{1} For example, we used to go to the post office to send mail; now most of us also send digitized mail over the Internet known as e-mail. We used to go to bookstores to browse and buy books; now we also browse digitally. We used to buy a CD to listen to music; now many of us obtain our digitized music off the Internet and download it to an MP3 player. Friedman also talks about how the Internet has been the great equalizer. A good example of that is Google. Whether you are a university professor with a high speed Internet connection or a poor kid in Asia with access to an Internet café, you have the same basic access to research information. The Internet puts an enormous amount of information at our fingertips. Essentially, all of the information on the Internet is available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. The Internet (and the accompanying digital tools developed to use it) has even changed our language. In the past, if you left a message asking when your friend was going to arrive at the airport, usually you would receive a complete sentence. Today the message would be something like: AA 635 @ 7:42 PM DFW. Tell a joke in a chat room, and you will receive responses like LOL ("laughing out loud") or ROFL ("rolling on the floor laughing"). As people leave the chat room, they may type BBL ("be back later"). Such abbreviations and computer language are a relatively new phenomenon and were spawned by the growth of the Internet. I want to take a look at some of the challenges of the Internet as well as the attempt by government to control aspects of it. While the Internet has certainly provided information to anyone, anywhere, at any time, there are still limits to what the Internet can do in the global world.

The Challenge of the Internet The Internet has provided an opportunity to build a global information infrastructure that would link together the world's telecommunications and computer networks. But futurists and governmental leaders also believed that this interconnectedness would also bring friendship and cooperation, and that goal seems elusive. In a speech given over a decade ago, Vice-President Al Gore said, "Let us build a global community in which the people of neighboring countries view each other not as potential enemies, but as potential partners, as members of the same family in the vast, increasingly interconnected human family."{2} Maybe peace and harmony are just over the horizon because of the Internet, but I have my doubts. The information superhighway certainly has connected the world together into one large global network, but highways don't bring peace. Highways connected the various countries in Europe for centuries, yet war was common and peace was not. An information superhighway connects us with

countries all over the world, but global cooperation hasn't been the result, at least not yet. The information superhighway also has some dark back alleys. At the top of the list is pornography. The Internet has made the distribution of pornography much easier. It used to be that someone wanting to view this material had to leave their home and go to the other side of town. The Internet has become the ultimate brown wrapper. Hard core images that used to be difficult to obtain are now only a mouse click away. Children see pornography at a much younger age than just a decade ago. The average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is eleven years old.{3} Sometimes this exposure is intentional, usually it is accidental. Schools, libraries, and homes using filters often are one step behind those trying to expose more and more people to pornography. But the influence of the Internet on pornography is only one part of a larger story. In my writing on personal and social ethics, I have found that the Internet has made existing social problems worse. When I wrote my book Moral Dilemmas back in 1998, I dealt with such problems as drugs, gambling, and pornography. Seven years later when I was writing my new book, Christian Ethics in Plain Language, I noticed that every moral issue I discussed was made worse by the Internet. Now my chapter on pornography had a section on cyberporn. My chapter on gambling had a section dealing with online gambling. My chapter on adultery also dealt with online affairs.

Internet Regulation All of these concerns lead to the obvious question: Who will regulate the Internet? In the early day of the Internet, proponents saw it as the cyber-frontier that would be self-regulating. The Internet was to liberate us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. One writer said we should "look without illusion upon the present possibilities for building, in the on-line spaces of this world, societies more decent and free than those mapped onto dirt and concrete and capital."{4} And for a time, the self-government of the Internet worked fairly well. Internet pioneers were even successful in fighting off the Communications Decency Act which punished the transmission of "indecent" sexual communications or images on the Internet.{5} But soon national governments began to exercise their authority. Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, in their book, Who Controls the Internet?, describe the various ways foreign governments have exercised their authority.{6} •

France requires Yahoo to block Internet surfers from France so they cannot purchase Nazi memorabilia.{7}

•

The People's Republic of China requires Yahoo to filter materials that might be harmful or threatening to Party rule. Yahoo is essentially an Internet censor for the Communist

party.{8}

•

The Chinese version of Google is much slower than the American version because the company cooperates with the Chinese government by blocking search words the Party finds offensive (words like Tibet or democracy).

Even more disturbing is the revelation that Yahoo provided information to the Chinese government that led to the imprisonment of Chinese journalists and pro-democracy leaders. Reporters Without Borders found that Yahoo has been implicated in the cases of most of the people they were defending.{9} Columnist Clarence Page points out that "Microsoft cooperates in censoring or deleting blogs that offend the Chinese government's sensibilities. Cisco provides the hardware that gives China the best Internet-blocking and user-tracking technology on the planet."{10} All of this censorship and cooperation with foreign governments is disturbing, but it also underscores an important point. For years, proponents of the Internet have argued that we can't (or shouldn't) block Internet pornography or that we can't regulate what pedophiles do on the Internet. These recent revelations about Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft show that they can and do block information. The book Who Controls the Internet? argues that the last decade has led to the quiet rediscovery of the functions and justification for territorial government. The Internet has not replaced the legitimate structure of government with a self-regulated cyber-frontier. The Internet may change the way some of these territorial states govern, but it will not diminish their important role in regulating free societies.

Government and Intermediaries Governments have been able to exercise control over the Internet in various ways. This should not be too surprising. The book Who Controls the Internet? points out that while some stores in New York's Chinatown sell counterfeit Gucci bags and Rolex watches, you don't find these same products in local stores. That is because the "most important targets of the laws against counterfeits —trademark laws—are local retailers."{11} The U.S. government might not be able to go after manufacturers in China or Thailand that produce these counterfeits, but they certainly can go after retail stores. That's why you won't find these counterfeit goods in a Wal-Mart store. And while it is true that by controlling Wal-Mart or Sears doesn't eliminate counterfeit goods, government still can adequately control the flow of these goods by focusing on these intermediaries. Governments often control behavior through intermediaries. "Pharmacists and doctors are made into gatekeepers charged with preventing certain forms of drug abuse. Bartenders are responsible for

preventing their customers from driving drunk."{12} As the Internet has grown, there has also been an increase in new intermediaries. These would include Internet Service Providers (ISPs), search engines, browsers, etc. In a sense, the Internet has made the network itself the intermediary. And this has made it possible for governments to exert their control over the Internet. "Sometimes the government-controlled intermediary is Wal-Mart preventing consumer access to counterfeit products, sometimes it is the bartender enforcing drinking age laws, and sometimes it is an ISP blocking access to illegal information."{13} More than a decade ago, the German government raided the Bavarian offices of Compuserve because they failed to prevent the distribution of child pornography even though it originated outside of Germany.{14} In 2001, the British government threatened certain sites with criminal prosecution for distributing illegal adoption sites. The British ISPs agreed to block the sites so that British citizens could not access them.{15} Internet Service Providers, therefore, are the obvious target for governmental control. In a sense, they are the most important gatekeepers to the Internet.{16} Governmental control over the Internet is not perfect nor is it complete. But the control over intermediaries has allowed territorial governments to exercise much great control and regulation of the Internet than many of the pioneers of cyberspace would have imagined.

Globalization and Government In previous articles we have addressed the issue of globalization and have recognized that technology (including the Internet) has made it much easier to move information around the world. There is no doubt that the Internet has accelerated the speed of transmission and thus made the world smaller. It is much easier for people around the world to access information and share it with others in this global information infrastructure. Those who address the issue of globalization also believe that it diminishes the relevance of borders, territorial governments, and geography. Thomas Friedman believes that the Internet and other technologies are flattening the world "without regard to geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language."{17} In one sense, this is true. The lower costs of moving information and the sheer amount of information exchanged on the Internet have made it more difficult for governments to suppress information they do not like. The explosive growth of blogs and webpages have provided a necessary outlet for opinion and information. It is also true that there has been some self-governing behavior on the Internet. Friedman, for example, describes eBay as a "self-governing nation-state—the V.R.e., the Virtual Republic of eBay." The CEO of eBay even says, "People will say that eBay restored my faith in humanity— contrary to a world where people are cheating and don't give people the benefit of the doubt."{18}

But it also true that territorial governments work with eBay to arrest and prosecute those who are cheaters or who use the website in illegal ways. And it also relies on a banking system and the potential of governmental prosecution of fraud. We have also seen in this article that governments have also been able to exert their influence and authority over the Internet. They have been able to use the political process to alter or block information coming into their country and have been able to shape the Internet in ways that the early pioneers of the Internet did not foresee. Goldsmith and Wu believe that those talking about the force of globalization often naively believe that countries will be powerless in the face of globalization and the Internet. "When globalization enthusiasts miss these points, it is usually because they are in the grips of a strange technological determinism that views the Internet as an unstoppable juggernaut that will overrun the old and outdated determinants of human organization."{19} There is still a legitimate function for government (Romans 13:1-7) even in this new world of cyberspace. Contrary to the perceived assumption that the Internet will shape governments and move us quickly toward globalization, there is good evidence to suggest that governments will in many ways shape the Internet. Notes 1. Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). 2. Al Gore, Speech on U.S. Vision for the Global Information Infrastructure, World Telecommunications Development Conference, Buenos Aires, March 1994, 3. www.goelzer.net/telecom/al-gore.html. 4. Jerry Ropelato, "Internet Pornography Statistics," internet-filterreview.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html. 5. Julian Dibbell, "A Rape in Cyberspace," Village Voice, 23 Dec. 1993, 37. 6. Communications Decency Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, ti.t. v, 110 Stat. 56, 133-143. 7. Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? (NY: Oxford University Press, 2006). 8. Troy Wolverton and Jeff Pelline, "Yahoo to charge auction fees, ban hate materials," CNet News.com, 2 Jan. 2001, 9. news.com.com/2100-1017-25-452.html?legacy=cnet. 10. Goldsmith and Wu, Who Controls the Internet?, 9. 11. "Yahoo accused of helping jail China Internet writer," Reuters News Service, 19 Apr. 2006, 12. www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060420105508121. 13. Clarence Page, "Google caves to China's censors," Chicago Tribune, 16 Apr. 2006, 14. www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0604160321apr16,0,4616158.column 15. Goldsmith and Wu, Who Controls the Internet?, 67. 16. Ibid., 68. 17. Ibid., 72. 18. Edmund L. Andrews, "Germany Charges Compuserve Manager," New York Times, 17 Apr.

1997. 19. John Carvel, "Prison Terms for Illegal Adoptions: Internet Babies Case Prompts Tough New Sanctions," Guardian (UK), 15 March 2001. 20. Jonathan Zittrain, "Internet Points of Control," 44 B.C.L. Rev. 653, 664-69 (2003). 21. Friedman, The World is Flat, 176. 22. Ibid., 455. 23. Goldsmith and Wu, Who Controls the Internet?, 183.

http://www.net4dev.se/uimonen/ The exponential growth and global expansion of the Internet has led many people to believe that the Internet is ushering in a new era, the information age, and a new social form, the information society. By equating the development of new information technologies with the evolution of a new informational social order, these notions reflect the primacy awarded to science and technology in representations of modernity. From an anthropological perspective, this visionary belief in technology-induced progress is instructive of the extent to which technological development is a result of culturally mediated social agency. And it is the ways in which different actors interpret the meaning of the Internet that this monograph is concerned with, the characteristics of which are analyzed in terms of the broader processes of modernization and globalization. Approaching Internet development in terms of cultural management, this study focuses on the social dynamics underlying its expansion in developing countries. Individuals actively involved in this process form the ethnographic basis of the analysis. Positioned within different organizational frameworks, the activities and perspectives of these Internet pioneers provide an emic understanding of the culture of networking. Representing the social and cultural embeddedness of the Internet, the culture of networking is a subculture that is both related to and diverges from dominant cultural forms. In this investigation, the focus lies on the dynamic interrelations between the culture of networking and existing power relations, at international and national levels. The research is based on multi-sited and translocal fieldwork in Geneva (international discourses and activities), Southeast Asia (regional and national case studies) and cyberspace (translocal site). Relying on a variety of investigative techniques, the research has been carried out from 1995 until the present.

http://www.socyberty.com/Issues/The-Internet-andGlobalization.121349 The positive and negative impacts of the internet on globalization. There has been a great deal of discussion in recent years about globalization, which can be defined as “the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across borders.” Evidence of globalization is seen in our daily lives. We are being influenced by the on rush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers and fast food with MTV, Macintosh and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogeneous global network: one Mc world tied together by technology, ecology, communication, and commerce. Technology is perhaps the most visible aspect of globalization and in many ways its driving force. Communication technology has revolutionized our information systems. Globalization tends to be most perceptible and observable in almost every facet of life mainly due to the emergence of internet technology. The internet technology is globally integrating and amalgamating the people of the world. The advent of the Internet in its unquantifiable shape and form has over the past decade provided a common platform upon which countries from all corners of the Earth are able to communicate and share information. Despite of the widespread usage and availability of new technology, the issue been brought to the forefront of the debate between advocates on both sides of the globalization aisle. The impact of internet on globalization has both positive and negative aspects. The positive impact of the internet technology on globalization include the modernization and improvement in the business sector on a world wide basis. Businesses improve their global competitiveness and productivity with more efficient electronic transaction processing and instant access to information. New information and communication technologies (ICT) as well as radically changing international political and regulatory environments reshaped the nature of management consulting. It was during this period that ICT took center stage for global management consulting firms. The market is now more competitive with consumers having greater choices. With the advent of the internet technology work in the foreign countries is more available and accessible because the domestic laws are not as rigorous as they once were, thus assisting in the global nature of the business and allowing new consulting firms to establish a presence in countries that was once restricted. The services of the IT Professionals have been dramatically impacted by the explosive growth in Internet use and related technologies. In the 21st century, venerable trends in ITPS such as centralization and globalization are accelerating, and this is overturning and reversing the leverage ratios and thus introducing completely new capabilities. The Internet is impacting the way that services are bought, sold, and delivered, altering relationships among clients, firms, and employees and speeding the globalization of the consulting industry. There can be seen a better relationship between the clients and the firms through internet which is globally seen all over the world. Instead

of face to face meetings the clients can easily deal with the big firms and industries via internet and thus developing a firm client relationship. With the use of the internet technology there can be seen a great positive force on globalization as it tends to increase the communication processes between people living in different parts of the world and also helps to promote the political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of a country. As there is a positive impact of internet on globalization there can be seen a negative impact of internet on globalization as well. While the interdependence and the internet technological advancement have increased in some parts of the world, this is not true in the vast majority of the South. South refers to the developing world, the less developed countries, and the third world. These are the poorer countries in contrast to the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In this case "Global" cannot be regarded as "Universal". Although a small number of people in the South may have access to the internet and truly live in the "global village", the large majority of the population in these countries does not have access to the internet technology. Despite the rapid globalization of the internet, the less developed countries cannot benefit as much as those of the developed countries in economic as well as in political institutions. The globalization of internet technology in the less developed countries typically is a one way proposition: the people do not control any of the information; they only receive it. It is also true that worldwide the ability to control or generate broadcasts rests in the hands of the tiny minority. This shows that in these countries the internet technology generally does not have a neutral application. The placement of the internet technology in developing countries often causes social costs, as well as costs in the form of urbanization, employment displacement, and the "digital divide." There can be seen specific and particular risks in the global environment because the gain in power from the techno-economic progress is rapidly being overshadowed. Risks in this sense can be viewed as the probability of harm arising from technological and economic change. Hazards linked to industrial production, for example, can quickly spread beyond the immediate context in which they are generated. Although the current globalization system has different attributes, rules, incentives, and characteristics, but the system is as pervasive as the Cold War system. In order to create a balance in the application of the internet technology it must adhere to the specific standards. The internet technology no matter where it is applied, can only be understood and valued in relation to the social group that creates or uses it, because every model of society and development conceives of and uses a different kind of technology, which should neither give priority to community action nor to the local necessities. Thus the internet both has positive as well as negative effects on globalization and they play equally an important part in the financial and economic status of a specific country. The negative impact on the globalization can be reduced if an equilibrium and balance is created and developmental techniques and schemes of information technology are introduced in the less developing countries so that they may progress and pace forward in the 21st century.

Useful! http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001385/138569E.pdf#page=23 The Internet as the major example of new electronic information and communication technologies (ICTs), in fact, affects patterns of language use in many respects. On the one hand, it seems to support the trends of linguistic standardisation which accompany the more general processes of globalisation; the spread of English as a lingua franca of the Internet immediately comes to mind. In this sense, the “digital gap” characteristic of the current state of the knowledge and information society and the unequal use of language on the Internet seem to reinforce each other. On the other hand, the Internet may actually support the maintenance of local minority languages in situations, where access to national spheres of communication is restricted and conventional resources for storing multilingual information are scarce. At the same time we were acutely aware of the other limitations of our research.4 In particular, we were very conscious that we were faced here with the problem of Braudel’s longue durée (Braudel 1980). The phenomena which we are researching are in flux and developing rapidly.5 In 1998, 57% of those with access to the Internet were North American, and English language speakers constituted a large percentage of the other geographical groups. In 2003, the proportions had changed dramatically. Only about 30% of those online were resident in North America. Another 30% were in Asia. Europe accounted for another 30%. In five years the language repertoires of Internet users have thus changed substantially. From within it is not always easy to see the full picture and certainly not possible to see the final picture. When we started the research in September 2002, an NUA internet survey calculated that one in five of the world’s population had access to the Internet and suggested that, in some parts of the world, (e.g. Africa and south America) use was increasing at a rate of 20% per year. In such a volatile situation it is clear that reports on language and Internet use can only be provisional. there is little consensus on the definition of globalization and no agreement at all on whether it is a beneficial or malevolent force in the world. However, despite a variety of views, there is one aspect of the phenomenon on which there is no dissent. All commentators agree that globalization is characterised by unprecedented flows of information, exchanges among different groups and networks that transcend the local and national. His paper contributes to the debate on globalization and whether the Internet is yet one more element in the division of the world into the haves and have nots.7 He reminds us that the Internet remains an elite activity.

Access to electricity, phone lines, computer hardware and education for literacy are not within the reach of many millions in the developing world. These basic facts should rein in too optimistic a view of the global reach of the new communication technologies.

Globalization Globalization is surely one of the most commonly used and misused terms in the world today whenever people talk or write about politics, economics, the environment, music or just their day-to-day lives. For different groups the word has different resonance. For the international jet set, Globalization means that their business and leisure activities know no borders. For those who work in offices or factories around the world, Globalization might simply mean that they constantly exchange e-mails with colleagues located on different continents and that decisions taken in central headquarters, far away in kilometres but within immediate reach electronically, have a direct effect on their lives. For teenagers in the economically privileged parts of the world, it might be MTV, with its dominant discourse of consumerism, which is most representative of Globalization. However, for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants, particularly in sub Saharan Africa and some parts of South America and Asia, Globalization may mean economic conditions associated with worsening life circumstances rather than changes associated with having access to the kind of technologies that make possible instant communication and watching television. Globalization can be taken to refer to those spatio-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents. Without reference to such expansive spatial connections, there can be no clear or coherent formulation of the term. (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton, 1999: 15) [Globalization is] the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa. (Giddens 1990: 64)

With the flows and networks of closer social relations and connections, the fear of homogenisation has surfaced. Scholars adopting the stance that Globalization will mean one world culture generally believe that homogenising forces will eventually leave everyone in the world living, thinking and acting in very similar ways. For example, George Ritzer (1996, 1998) envisages the eventual homogenisation of the means of consumption around the world, what he calls McDonaldization, that is ‘the principles of the fast-food restaurant [which] are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world’ (Ritzer, 1996: 1). Ritzer’s work bridges economic Globalization to cultural Globalization as he effectively argues that consumption and consumerism are central tenets of late modern culture. Along similar lines, Benjamin Barber (1995) argues that we are heading towards a single global culture, which he calls ‘McWorld’, defined as ‘an entertainment shopping experience that brings together malls, multiplex movie theatres, theme parks, spectator sports arenas, fast food chains (with their endless movie tieins) and television (with its burgeoning shopping networks) into a single vast

enterprise …’ (Barber 1995: 97). However, not all scholars would agree that Globalization leads necessarily to homogenisation. Nederveen Pieterse (1995) introduces into the discussion the concept of hybridization, understood as the natural mingling and mixing which goes on when the global meets the local. Elsewhere, Roland Robertson (1995) translates the Japanese term glocalization (Robertson, 1995), which he takes from the business context where it means marketing goods and services on global basis by catering to local particularities. Robertson re-invents the term for the context which interests him- cultures in contact- and uses it to signify what he calls the ‘interpenetrating’ of the ‘particular’ and the ‘universal’ (Robertson, 1995: 30). Both Pieterse and Robertson make the point that Globalization entails a synergetic relationship between the global and the local as opposed to the dominance of the former over the latter. It is evidence of this synergetic relationship with regard to language use that this present research is trying to track. Is there the equivalent linguistic glocalization, with English and lesser used languages increasingly used as alternatives to national languages? Latouche (1996) writes about the “Westernization of the world” and the progressive “worldwide standardization of lifestyles” (Latouche 1996: 3). For Latouche, fundamental Western ideology and culture, best exemplified in the United States, are becoming the norm around the world as there is convergence in all aspects of people’s lives, from how they dress to how they eat, from their entertainment preferences to their work habits and from architecture to their attitudes towards personal freedom, gender, race, religion and science. Spread of English is an expected part of this creeping uniformity. However, other scholars would disagree with the view that Globalization is merely US imperialism by other means. Writing in the early nineties, Giddens acknowledges that ‘[t]he first phase of Globalization was plainly governed, primarily, by the expansion of the West, and institutions which originated in the West’ (Giddens 1994: 96); however, he goes on to state: Although still dominated by Western power, Globalization today can no longer be spoken of only as a matter of one-way imperialism … now, increasingly, … there is no obvious ‘direction’ to Globalization at all, as its ramifications are everpresent. …’ (Giddens, 1994: 96).

Along with prominent social theorists and sociologists such as Ulrich Beck (e.g. 2000), Alain Touraine (e.g. 1997) and Anthony Giddens (2000), Manuel Castells (1998, 2000) has written at length about the changes undergone in the advanced industrialised nations of the world over the past three decades. Crucially, during this period of time we have moved from industrial societies to post-industrial societies, or what Castells terms ‘informational societies’. Industrial societies were the outcome of intellectual and technological revolutions of the late 18th and 19th centuries, respectively, which led to advances in the production of material goods. By contrast, the third great intellectual and technological revolution has taken us to a ‘social organization in which information generation, processing and transmission become fundamental sources of production and power because of new technological conditions emerging in this historical period’ (Castells, 2000: 21). The lynchpin of this revolution has been the advent of advanced information technology. As Castells notes, technological advances in the post world war era, leading to the inventions of transistors (1947) and integrated circuits (1957), paved

the way for the invention in 1971 of the microprocessor or the computer chip, the basis of computers and information technology, which has yet to find its limits as regards the capacity for storage and access of information. Although no phenomenon now seems more indicative of the move away from the national than the Internet, it was conceived, ironically, as a way of ensuring US national defence in the case of Soviet attack at the height of the Cold War. Its inventors made every node of equal importance in the network so that attack on one area would not disable the whole network. It is this feature of the Internet that has made it infinitely extensible, non-hierarchical and adoptable. Its growth and internationalisation have been exponential. The first international link up between computers (University College London to Arpanet the US academic network) only happened in 1973. The rate of connection grew quickly after satellite technology was introduced in 1975. This brought down the cost of international telephone calls and improved the quality of contact. At first the Internet was used for sharing computer processing and sending data. The first email and chat group systems were developed in the 1970s among a small group of scientists in four American universities (UCLA, University of California in Santa Barbara, Stanford and University of Utah). By the mid-1970s, Apple computers had been launched and the era of the personal computer was born. By September 2002, NUA Internet surveys were suggesting that there could be as many as 605.600.000 people with access to the Internet as emailers.3 In 1990-1991, Tim Berners-Lee of the European institute for high energy physics, CERN, devised a hypertext system which allowed information to be shared over the Net. In 1992, this was released for general use as the World Wide Web. This gave access to information without the need to be in personal contact with the provider, who was able to post information without there being a specified recipient. Thus the Internet has two major functions: it allows the publication and dissemination of data on the World Wide Web without direct contact; it allows interaction among users on a person to person basis through email and chatrooms.4 A further function as an international market place is also rapidly developing. The interesting question is whether the language of these exchanges is predominantly English as was predicted in the early days of the technology. It is just incredible when I hear people talking about how open the Web is. It is the ultimate act of intellectual colonialism. The product comes from America so we either must adapt to English or stop using it. That is the right of any business. But if you are talking about a technology that is supposed to open the world to hundreds of millions of people you are joking. This just makes the world into new sorts of haves and have-nots. (Crystal, 1997: 108). I opened this paper with a discussion of Globalization as a way of situating the Internet as an eminently global phenomenon. The Internet is a means of disseminating information, a medium for exchange and a market place. As it develops it is clear that global does not equate with English only. References Babel 1997. www.isoc.org:8030/palamres.en.html BARBER, B. 1995. Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Random House BECK, U. 2000. What Is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity Press CARVIN, A. 2001. ‘Website language stats’.

http://owa.Benton.org/listserv/wa.exe?A2=in d0104andL=digitaldivideandD=1andT=0and O=DandF=lands=andP=11879 CASTELLS, M. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. CASTELLS, M. 1998. The End of Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell CASTELLS, M. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell CHEW, P. G-L. 1999. ‘Linguistic imperialism. Globalism, and the English language’. In D. Graddol and U. Meinhof (eds) English in a Changing World. Guildford: AILA CRYSTAL, D. 1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press CRYSTAL, D. 2001. English and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cyberatlas. http://cyberatlas.internet.com/ FRIEDMAN, J. 1994. Cultural Identity and Global Process. London: Sage GIDDENS, A. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press GIDDENS, A. 1994. ‘Risk, trust, reflexivity’. In U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Stanford: Stanford University Press GIDDENS, A. 2000. Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives. London: Routledge Global Reach 2002. globalreach. biz/globstats/refs.php3, 30 Sept. GREENSPAN, R. (26/7/02) ‘In Any Language, Hispanics Enjoy Surfing’. http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/de mographics/article/0,,5901_1369131,00.html GRAY, J. 1998. False Dawn. London: Granta Books HELD, D., MCGREW, A., GOLDBLATT, D. and J. PERRATON 1999. Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Polity HOBSBAWM, E. 1994. The Age of Extremes. London: Abacus JOSEPH, J. ‘Linguistic Identity and the limits of Global English’. Paper given at the the English Language Research Seminar. University of Birmingham, UK. 12 March 2002 LATOUCHE, S. 1996. The Westernizing of the World. Cambridge: Polity Press MATTHEWS, G. 2000. ‘Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket’ in Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for a Home in the Cultural Supermarket. London: Routledge. Pp 167-197 NAUGHTON, J. 2000. A Brief History of the Future: the origins of the World Wide Web. London: Routledge NEDERVEEN PIETERSE, J. 1995. ‘Globalization as Hybridization’. In M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson (eds) Global Modernities. London: Sage OHMAE, K. 1990. The Borderless World. London: Collins OHMAE, K. 1995. The End of the Nation State. New York: Free Press Pew Internet and American Life. http://www.pewinternet.org/

PHILLIPSON, R. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press PHILLIPSON, R. 2003. English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy. London: Routledge PHILLIPSON R. and T. SKUTNABB-KANGAS 1999. Englishisation: one dimension of Globalization. In D. Graddol and U. Meinhof (eds) English in a Changing World. Guildford: AILA RITZER, G. 1996. The McDonaldization of Society Revised edition, London: Sage RITZER, G. 1998. The McDonaldization Thesis, London: Sage ROBERTSON, R. 1992. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London: Sage ROBERTSON, R. 1995. Glocalization: TimeSpace and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity’, in M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson (eds.) Global Modernities London: Sage. pp. 25-44. Rostow Research Group. http://www.roslowresearch.com/ SAUNDERS, C. (17/7/2002) ‘Latinos Outpace Other Groups' Online Growth’, http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/de mographics/article/0,,5901_1428231,00.html SCHILLER, H.I. 1985. ‘Transnational media and national development’, in K. Nordenstreng and H.I. Schiller (eds.) National Sovereignty and International Communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex SCHWATZL, A. 2001. The (Im)possibilities of machine translation. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. SKUTNABB-KANGAS, T. 2000. Linguistic Genocide in Education – or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Mahwah, NJ & London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates SKUTNABB-KANGAS, T. and R. PHILLIPSON 2001. ‘Linguicide’ In R. Mesthrie (ed.) Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Elsevier Science SMITH, P. 1997. Millennium Dreams. London: Verso TOURAINE, A. 1994. Qu'est-ce que la démocratie? Paris: Fayard TOURAINE, A. 1997. What is Democracy? Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press WARSCHAUER, M. 1998. ‘Technology and indigenous language revitalization: Analyzing the experience of Hawai’i’. Canadian Modern Language Review, 55/1. pp 140-61 WARSCHAUER, M. 2002. ‘Languages.com: The Internet and linguistic pluralism’. In I. Snyder (ed) Silicon Literacies: Communication, Innovation and Education in the Electronic Age. London: Routledge WARSCHAUER, M. 2003. Technology and Social Inclusion. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press WARSCHAUER, M. and K. DONAGHY 1997. ‘Leokï: A powerful voice of Hawaiian language revitalization’. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 10/4. pp 349-62 WARSCHAUER, M., G. REFAAT and A. ZOHRY 2000. ‘Language and literacy online: A study of Egyptian Internet users’. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics. Vancouver, Canada

WILLIAMSON, J. 2000. “What Should the World Bank Think About the Washington Consensus?” World Bank Research Observer. Vol. 15, No. 2. August 2000. pp 251-264 WRIGHT, S. 2003. Language Policy and Language Planning: from nationalism to Globalization. London: Palgrave. About the Author David Block is senior lecturer at the Institute of Education, London University, UK; email: [email protected]

(Graphs on English web-pages, U.S. users, etc.) The Internet was heralded optimistically as a breakthrough in communication, allowing access for all to information and the possibility for all information to be disseminated. It would break down barriers between communities and allow everyone to have a voice. Those without resources would not be disadvantaged as all could be heard in this new medium. Jonathan Freedland, writing in ‘The Guardian’ (18/09/02) describes the World Wide Web as a new form of imperialism. He notes that such a view is increasingly being embraced by such disparate figures as the liberal dissenter, Gore Vidal, and the conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer. From this perspective the Internet is seen as central to American business and as promoting the culture and values of the United States via English. The argument that this is a new ‘soft’ imperialism, changing people’s perceptions rather than invading their lands, surfaces again and again in the media and in the political class. The Web is an eclectic medium, and this is seen also in its multilinguistic inclusiveness…it offer(s) a home to all languages – once their communities have a functioning computer technology. This has been the most notable change since the Web began. It was originally a totally English medium...but with the Internet’s globalisation, the presence of other languages has steadily risen. (Crystal, 2001:216)

Useful! http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/www/index.php?cmd=www_search&offset=0&limit=5&m ulti_search_search_mode=publication&multi_search_publication_fulltext_mod=fulltext&textfield_ submit=true&search_module=multi_search&search=Search&search_field=title_idx&fulltext_searc h=Globalization+and+the+Internet%3A+A+Research+Report

In a postmodern world characterized by global capitalism and electronic mediation, the Internet substitutes the modern nation–state as an arena for the maintenance of cultural distinctiveness. The Internet has no borders; it is an arena where the practice of entering and exiting a nation-state does not exist. It serves as a zone of transportation, moving items such as symbolic capital, cultural metaphors and personal communication. Thus, because electronic media like the Internet can simulate and transmit content, it can play a key part in the proliferation of global capitalism. So,

following the same logic, the Internet should assist in the spread of uniformity across the global commodity market and in order to do so, it would also utilize the heterogeneity of its images–a case of difference breeding sameness.

Globalization and the Internet: A Research Report The study was initiated with an intuition that, in a postmodern world characterized by global capitalism and electronic mediation, the Internet substitutes the modern nation–state as an arena for the maintenance of cultural distinctiveness. The Internet has no borders; it is an arena where the practice of entering and exiting a nation-state does not exist. Yet, in a sense, the entire Internet can be considered a borderland: an intermingling place for a multinational population who may be engaged in a variety of activities. It is also a borderland because the Internet lies between offline location A and B, as an intermediate zone that is neither here (A) nor there (B); so, it can be used to communicate between these two spheres. Thus the Internet serves as a zone of transportation, moving items such as symbolic capital, cultural metaphors and personal communication. Electronic media play an increasingly important role in this process because of two main reasons. First, capitalism itself is dominated by the force of language, which helps to construct the consumer (Poster, 2001). Second, the market mechanism is overtly centered on the production and consumption of images (Baudrillard, 1983). Thus, because electronic media like the Internet can simulate and transmit content, it can play a key part in the proliferation of global capitalism. So, following the same logic, the Internet should assist in the spread of uniformity across the global commodity market and in order to do so, it would also utilize the heterogeneity of its images–a case of difference breeding sameness. The notion of abstract community formation was a useful construct for the analysis, since it is based on electronic media usage (Holmes, 1997). Also, such a community is formed when the mediation of images allows a dispersed group to socialize on a global basis, although they might be atomized in front of their computers. Incidentally, this circumstance has certain parallels with the model of global fissures, because the latter suggests that the mediation of images can recreate homelands in virtual neighborhoods for a deterritorialized population (Appadurai, 1996). The connection is particularly evident in the case of online groups formed on the basis of national origins, like an ethnic community on the Web. This is because these demonstrate the recreation of a national space, through the ability to communicate in a virtual sphere, across nation-state borders. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations (P. Foss, P. Patton & P. Beitchman, Trans.). New York, NY: Semiotext (e).

Poster, M. (2001). What’s the matter with the Internet? Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Friedman: Globalization has “its own unique logic, rules, pressures and incentives…” “It is an international system—the dominant international system that replaced the Cold War system after the fall of the Berlin Wall.” “We are now in the new international system of globalization.” (p. 7). INTERNET: The globalization system has one overarching feature—integration. The world has become an increasingly interwoven place, and today, whether you are a company or a country, your threats and opportunities increasingly derive from who you are connected to. This globalization system is also characterized by a single word: the Web. “…in the globalization system we reach for the Internet, which is a symbol that we are all increasingly connected and nobody is quite in charge.” (p. 8). The globalization system is “a dynamic ongoing process. That’s why I define globalization this way: it is the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before—in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is enabling the world to reach into individuals, corporations and nation-states farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before. The driving idea behind globalization is free-market capitalism—the more you let market forces rule and the more you open your economy to free trade and competition, the more efficient and flourishing your economy will be. Globalization means the spread of free-market capitalism to virtually every country in the world. Globalization has its own dominant culture, which is why it tends to be homogenizing to a certain degree. Culturally speaking, globalization has tended to involve the spread (for better or worse) of Americanization—from Big Macs to iMacs to Mickey Mouse. Globalization has its own defining technologies: computerization, miniaturization, digitization, satellite communications, fiber optics and the Internet, which reinforce its defining perspective of integration. Once a country makes the leap into the system of globalization, its elites begin to internalize this perspective of integration, and always try to locate… (p. 9) …themselves in a global context. Globalization tends to revolve around Moore’s Law, which states that the computing power of silicon chips will double every eighteen to twenty-four months, while

the price will halve. In globalization, the most frequently asked question is: “To what extent are you connected to everyone?” The second most frequently asked question is: “How fast is your modem?” (p.10) Globalization also has its own demographic pattern—a rapid acceleration of the movement of people from rural areas and agricultural lifestyles to urban areas and urban lifestyles more intimately linked with global fashion, food, markets and entertainment trends. (p. 13) Globalization “has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people …it has simultaneously wired the world into networks…it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any time in history. Individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly—unmediated by a state. …now you have Super-empowered individuals…all of them are now able to act directly on the world stage. Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her contribution to the international ban on landmines. She achieved that ban not only without much government help, but in the face of opposition from all the major powers. And what did she say was her secret weapon for organizing 1,000 different human rights and arms control groups on six continents? ‘E-mail.’ (p. 14) …the system of globalization has come upon us far faster than our ability to retrain ourselves to see and comprehend it. Think about just this one fact: Most people had never even heard of the Internet in 1990, and very few people had an E-mail address then. That was just ten years ago! But today the Internet, cell phones and E-mail have become essential tools that many people, and not only in developed countries, cannot imagine living without. (p. 15) The democratization of finance, technology and information gave birth to a new power source in the world—the Electronic Herd. The Electronic Herd is made up of all the faceless stock, bond and currency traders sitting behind computer screens all over the globe, moving their money around from mutual funds to pension funds to emerging market funds, or trading on the Internet from their basements. And it also consists of the big multinational corporations who now spread their factories around the world, constantly shifting them to the most efficient, low-cost producers. This herd has grown exponentially thanks to the democratizations of finance, technology, and information—so much so that today it is beginning to replace governments as the primary source of capital for both companies and countries to grow. Indeed, as countries increasingly have to fun balanced budgets to fit into the Golden Straitjacket, their economies become ever more dependent on the Electronic Herd for growth capital. So to thrive in today’s globalization system a country not only has to put on the Golden Straitjacket, it has to join this Electronic Herd. (p. 109) The internet allowed “a whole new group of people, several billion, in fact, [to walk] out into the playing field from China, India, and the former Soviet Empire. Thank to the new flat world, and its new tools, some of them were quickly able to collaborate and compete directly with everyone else. This was the third convergence.” (p. 175) It is my contention that the opening of the Berlin Wall, Netscape, work flow, outsourcing, offshoring, open-sourcing, insourcing, supply-chaining, in-forming, and the steroids amplifying them all reinforced one another, like complementary goods. They just needed time to converge and start to work together in a complementary, mutually enhancing fashion. That tipping point arrived sometime around the year 2000.

The net result of this convergence was the creation of a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration—the sharing of knowledge and work—in real time, without regard to geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language. No, not everyone has access yet to this platform, this playing field, but it is open today to more people in more places on more days in more ways than anything like it ever before in the history of the world. (p. 176) Globalization 2.0 was really the era of mainframe computing, which was very vertical—commandand-control oriented, with companies and their individual departments tending to be organized in vertical silos. Globalization 3.0, which is built around the convergence of the ten flatteners, and particularly the combination of the PC, the microprocessor, the Internet, and fiber optics, flipped the playing field from largely top-down to more side to side. And this naturally fostered and demanded new business practices, which were less about command and control and more about connecting and collaborating horizontally. (p. 178) It is this triple convergence—of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration—that I believe is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty-first century. Giving so many people access to all these tools of collaboration, along with the ability through search engines and the Web to access billions of pages of raw information, ensures that the next generation of innovations will come from all over Planet Flat. The scale of the global community that is soon going to be able to participate in all sorts of discovery and innovation is something the world has simply never seen before. (p. 181) …the emergence of work flow software and Internet applications…made it possible for a Dhruva to go into business as a minimultinational from day one: Word, Outlook, NetMeeting, 3D Studio MAX. But Google is the key. “It’s fantastic,” said Rajesh. “One of the things that’s always an issue for our clients from the West is, ‘Will you Indians be able to understand the subtle nuances of Western content?’ Now, to a large extent, it was a very valid question. But the Internet has helped us to be able to aggregate different kinds of content at the touch of a button, and today if someone asks you to make something that looks like Tom and Jerry, you just say ‘Google Tom & Jerry’ and you’ve got tons and tons of pictures and information and reviews and write-ups about Tom and Jerry, which you can read and simulate.” (p. 187) * Importantly, all over the world, “people, en masse, were starting to get comfortable with the new global infrastructure. “There is a lot more we can do with this infrastructure, as more and more people shift to becoming paperless in their offices and realize that distances really [do] not matter… It will supercharge all of this. It’s really going to be a different world.” The Internet brought to the table the element of choice and instant comparison that did not exist before for a little company like ours…Already we have in our gaming industry artists and designers working from home, something unimaginable a few years back, given the fact that developing games is a highly interactive process. They connect into the company’s internal system over the Internet, using a secure feature called VPN [virtual private network], making their presence no different from the guy in the next cubicle. * The Internet now makes this whole world “like one marketplace,” added Rajesh [founder and CEO of Dhruva Interactive, a small Indian game company based in Bangalore]. “This infrastructure is not only going to facilitate sourcing of work to the best price, best quality, from the best place, it is also going to enable a great amount of sharing of practices and knowledge, and it’s going to be ‘I

can learn from you and you can learn from me’ like never before. It’s very good for the world. The economy is going to drive integration and the integration is going to drive the economy.” (p. 188) If there is a skilled person in Timbuktu, he will get work if he knows how to access the rest of the world, which is quite easy today. You can make a Web site and have an e-mail address and you are up and running. And if you are able to demonstrate your work, using the same infrastructure, and if people are comfortable giving work to you, and if you are diligent and clean in your transactions, then you are in business. (p. 190) It is about staying sharp and being in the game… The world is a football field now and you’ve got to be sharp to be on the team which plays on the field. If you’re not good enough, you’re going to be sitting and watching the game. That’s all. (p. 191) The dot-com bust began in March 2001. Many people wrongly equated the dot-com boom with globalization. So when the dot-com boom went bust, and so many dot-coms (and the first that supported them) imploded, these same people assumed that globalization was imploding as well. The sudden flameout of dogfood.com and ten other Web sites offering to deliver ten pounds of puppy chow to your door in thirty minutes was supposed to be proof that globalization and the IT revolution were all sizzle and no beef. This was pure foolishness. Those who thought that globalization was the same thing as the dot-com boom and the dot-com bust marked the end of globalization could not have been more wrong. …the dot-com bust actually drove globalization into hypermode by forcing companies to outsource and offshore more and more functions in order to save on scarce capital. This was a key factor in laying the groundwork for Globalization 3.0. (p. 197) Between the dot-com bust and today, Google went from processing roughly 150 million searches per day to roughly one billion searches per day, with only a third coming from inside the United States. As its auction model caught on worldwide, eBay went from twelve hundred employees in early 2000 to sixty-three hundred by 2004, all in the period when globalization was supposed to be ‘over.’ Between 2000 and 2004, total global Internet usage grew 125 percent, including 186 percent in Africa, 209 percent in Latin America, 124 percent in Europe, and 105 percent in North America, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Yes, globalization sure ended, all right. (p. 198) As a result of the triple convergence, global collaboration and competition—between individuals and individuals, companies and individuals, companies and companies, and companies and customers—have been made cheaper, easier, more friction-free, and more productive for more people from more corners of the earth than at any time in the history of the world. HP’s Carly Fiorina in 2004 began to declare in her public speeches that the dot-com boom and bust were just “the end of the beginning.” The last twenty-five years in technology, said Fiorina, then the CEO of HP, have been just “the warm-up act.” Now we are going into the main event, she said, “and by the main event, I mean an era in which technology will literally transform every aspect of business, every aspect of life and every aspect of society.” (p. 200) Because when the world starts to move from a primarily vertical (command and control) valuecreation model to an increasingly horizontal (connect and collaborate) creation model, it doesn’t

affect just how business gets done. It affects everything—how communities and companies define themselves, where companies and communities stop and start, how individuals balance their different identities as consumers, employees, shareholders, and citizens, and what role government has to play. (p. 201) We are moving into a world where more and more communication is in the form of bits traveling through cyberspace and stored on servers located all over the world. No government controls this cyber-realm. (p. 218) Indeed, “The Internet now makes this whole world ‘like one marketplace,’ added Rajesh [founder and CEO of Dhruva Interactive, a small Indian game company based in Bangalore]. Furthermore, “This infrastructure is not only going to facilitate sourcing of work to the best price, best quality, from the best place, it is also going to enable a great amount of sharing of practices and knowledge, and it’s going to be ‘I can learn from you and you can learn from me’ like never before. It’s very good for the world. The economy is going to drive integration and the integration is going to drive the economy.” (p. 188) END FREIDMAN The complexities of globalization make these hypotheses hard to test. Globalization has many components, but three which have been identified are outsourcing of manufacturing, the rise of producer services, and immigration. Producer services like finance, accounting, internet consulting, and law firms are critical to support other global businesses, and have been identified as critical markers of the knowledge driven economy and of globalization (Florida, 2002). International migration is a classic globalizing process. Manufacturing, producer services, and immigration also have the advantage of being reasonably clear to identify and measure, from census data, for many units like urban areas. (p. 385) Zhong, Xing, Clark, Terry Nichols and Sassen, Saskia (2007) The geography and composition of the global economy changed so as to produce a complex duality: a spatially dispersed, yet globally integrated organization of economic activity. (p. 3) Saskia

The GLOBAL CITY Globalization has also had a crucial political dimension: namely, the American-led worldwide promotion of free elections and democratization. That markets and democracy swept the world simultaneously is not a coincidence. After the fall of the Berlin Wall a common political and economic consensus emerged, not only in the West but to a considerable extent around the world. Markets and democracy, working hand in hand, would transform the world into a community of

modernized, peace-loving nations. In the process, ethnic hatred, extremist fundamentalism, and other ‘backward’ aspects of underdevelopment would be swept away. (p. 123) WORLD ON FIRE

Globalization (globalisation) in its literal sense is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.[1] Globalization is often used to refer to economic globalization, that is, integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.[2] The United Nations ESCWA has written that globalization "is a widely-used term that can be defined in a number of different ways. When used in an economic context, it refers to the reduction and removal of barriers between national borders in order to facilitate the flow of goods, capital, services and labour...although considerable barriers remain to the flow of labour...Globalization is not a new phenomenon. It began in the late nineteenth century, but its spread slowed during the period from the start of the First World War until the third quarter of the twentieth century. This slowdown can be attributed to the inwardlooking policies pursued by a number of countries in order to protect their respective industries...The pace of globalization picked up rapidly during the fourth quarter of the twentieth century..."[3] Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute defines globalization as "the diminution or elimination of stateenforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result."[4] Thomas L. Friedman "examines the impact of the 'flattening' of the globe", and argues that globalized trade, outsourcing, supply-chaining, and political forces have changed the world permanently, for both better and worse. He also argues that the pace of globalization is quickening and will continue to have a growing impact on business organization and practice.[5] Noam Chomsky argues that the word globalization is also used, in a doctrinal sense, to describe the neoliberal form of economic globalization.[6] Herman E. Daly argues that sometimes the terms internationalization and globalization are used interchangeably but there is a slight formal difference. The term "internationalization" refers to the importance of international trade, relations, treaties etc. International means between or among nations. Globalization, since World War II, is largely the result of planning by politicians to breakdown borders hampering trade to increase prosperity and interdependence thereby decreasing the chance

of future war. Their work led to the Bretton Woods conference, an agreement by the world's leading politicians to lay down the framework for international commerce and finance, and the founding of several international institutions intended to oversee the processes of globalization. These institutions include the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), and the International Monetary Fund. Globalization has been facilitated by advances in technology which have reduced the costs of trade, and trade negotiation rounds, originally under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which led to a series of agreements to remove restrictions on free trade. Since World War II, barriers to international trade have been considerably lowered through international agreements - GATT. Particular initiatives carried out as a result of GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO), for which GATT is the foundation, have included: •

Promotion of free trade: o Reduction or elimination of tariffs; creation of free trade zones with small or no tariffs o Reduced transportation costs, especially resulting from development of containerization for ocean shipping. o Reduction or elimination of capital controls o Reduction, elimination, or harmonization of subsidies for local businesses o Creation of subsidies for global corporations o Harmonization of intellectual property laws across the majority of states, with more restrictions. o Supranational recognition of intellectual property restrictions (e.g. patents granted by China would be recognized in the United States)

Cultural globalization, driven by communication technology and the worldwide marketing of Western cultural industries, was understood at first as a process of homogenization, as the global domination of American culture at the expense of traditional diversity. However, a contrasting trend soon became evident in the emergence of movements protesting against globalization and giving new momentum to the defense of local uniqueness, individuality, and identity, but largely without success. [9] The Uruguay Round (1986 to 1994)[10] led to a treaty to create the WTO to mediate trade disputes and set up a uniform platform of trading. Other bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, including sections of Europe's Maastricht Treaty and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have also been signed in pursuit of the goal of reducing tariffs and barriers to trade. Global conflicts, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States of America, is interrelated with globalization because it was primary source of the "war on terror", which had started the steady increase of the prices of oil and gas, due to the fact that most OPEC member countries were in the Arabian Peninsula.[11] World exports rose from 8.5% of gross world product in 1970 to 16.1% of gross world product in 2001. [6]

Effects of globalization Globalization has various aspects which affect the world in several different ways such as: •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Industrial - emergence of worldwide production markets and broader access to a range of foreign products for consumers and companies. Particularly movement of material and goods between and within national boundaries. Financial - emergence of worldwide financial markets and better access to external financing for borrowers. As these worldwide structures grew more quickly than any transnational regulatory regime, the instability of the global financial infrastructure dramatically increased, as evidenced by the financial crises of late 2008. Economic - realization of a global common market, based on the freedom of exchange of goods and capital. The interconnectedness of these markets, however meant that an economic collapse in any one given country could not be contained. Political - some use "globalization" to mean the creation of a world government, or cartels of governments (e.g. WTO, World Bank, and IMF) which regulate the relationships among governments and guarantees the rights arising from social and economic globalization. [14] Politically, the United States has enjoyed a position of power among the world powers; in part because of its strong and wealthy economy. With the influence of globalization and with the help of The United States’ own economy, the People's Republic of China has experienced some tremendous growth within the past decade. If China continues to grow at the rate projected by the trends, then it is very likely that in the next twenty years, there will be a major reallocation of power among the world leaders. China will have enough wealth, industry, and technology to rival the United States for the position of leading world power. [15] . Informational - increase in information flows between geographically remote locations. Arguably this is a technological change with the advent of fibre optic communications, satellites, and increased availability of telephone and Internet. Language - the most popular language is English[16]. o About 75% of the world's mail, telexes, and cables are in English. o Approximately 60% of the world's radio programs are in English. o About 90% of all Internet traffic uses English. Competition - Survival in the new global business market calls for improved productivity and increased competition. Due to the market becoming worldwide, companies in various industries have to upgrade their products and use technology skillfully in order to face increased competition.[17] Ecological - the advent of global environmental challenges that might be solved with international cooperation, such as climate change, cross-boundary water and air pollution, over-fishing of the ocean, and the spread of invasive species. Since many factories are built in developing countries with less environmental regulation, globalism and free trade may increase pollution. On the other hand, economic development historically required a "dirty" industrial stage, and it is argued that developing countries should not, via regulation, be prohibited from increasing their standard of living.

•

• •

•

Cultural - growth of cross-cultural contacts; advent of new categories of consciousness and identities which embodies cultural diffusion, the desire to increase one's standard of living and enjoy foreign products and ideas, adopt new technology and practices, and participate in a "world culture". Some bemoan the resulting consumerism and loss of languages. Also see Transformation of culture. o Spreading of multiculturalism, and better individual access to cultural diversity (e.g. through the export of Hollywood and Bollywood movies). Some consider such "imported" culture a danger, since it may supplant the local culture, causing reduction in diversity or even assimilation. Others consider multiculturalism to promote peace and understanding between peoples. o Greater international travel and tourism o Greater immigration, including illegal immigration o Spread of local consumer products (e.g. food) to other countries (often adapted to their culture). o Worldwide fads and pop culture such as Pokémon, Sudoku, Numa Numa, Origami, Idol series, YouTube, Orkut, Facebook, and MySpace. Accessible to those who have Internet or Television, leaving out a substantial segment of the Earth's population. o Worldwide sporting events such as FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games. o Incorporation of multinational corporations in to new media. As the sponsors of the All-Blacks rugby team, Adidas had created a parallel website with a downloadable interactive rugby game for its fans to play and compete. [18] Social - development of the system of non-governmental organisations as main agents of global public policy, including humanitarian aid and developmental efforts.[19] Technical o Development of a global telecommunications infrastructure and greater transborder data flow, using such technologies as the Internet, communication satellites, submarine fiber optic cable, and wireless telephones o Increase in the number of standards applied globally; e.g. copyright laws, patents and world trade agreements. Legal/Ethical o The creation of the international criminal court and international justice movements. o Crime importation and raising awareness of global crime-fighting efforts and cooperation.

Whilst it is all too easy to look at the positive aspects of Globalization and the great benefits that are apparent everywhere, there are also several negative occurrences that can only be the result of or major motivating factors that inspire some corporations to globalize. Globalization – the growing integration of economies and societies around the world – has been one of the most hotly-debated topics in international economics over the past few years. Rapid growth and poverty reduction in China, India, and other countries that were poor 20 years ago, has been a positive aspect of globalization. But globalization has also generated significant international opposition over concerns that it has increased inequality and environmental degradation [20] Business

Collapse of commodities market was the outcome of poor economic policies of 1980, which ultimately resulted in debt crisis, as LDCs had tried to expand commodity production and economic growth and had borrowed large sums of money. Banks then insisted on readjustment of interest rates on new and existing loans and LDCs agreed. At that moment, globalization compelled them to decline commodity prices. Commodities were the main source of income for LDCs, so it became more and more difficult for them to reduce or pay their debts, which ultimately caused unemployment in many commodity sectors. In order to repay their debts, LDC tried to adopt IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) to obtain funds from IMF. The strategy behind SAP program was to export more than import and produce hard cash to pay for the imports and direct the surplus towards debts. Although SAP was imposed for the betterment of economic condition of LDCs, but it did not work as it was planned. SAP created de-industrialization in LDCs and compelled them to again rely on export of their commodities. Selling of public assets to foreign investors also created unemployment. Globalization has had extensive impact on the world of business. In a business environment marked by globalization, the world seems to shrink, and other businesses halfway around the world can exert as great an impact on a business as one right down the street. Internet access and e-commerce have brought small-scale coops in Third World nations into the same arena as thriving businesses in the industrialized world, and visions of low-income workers handweaving rugs on primitive looms that compete with rug dealers in major cities are not totally far-fetched. Globalization has affected workforce demographics, as well. Today's workforces are characterized by greater diversity in terms of age, gender, ethnic and racial background, and a variety of other demographic factors. In fact, management of diversity has become one of the primary issues of 21st-century business. Trends such as outsourcing and offshoring are a direct offshoot of globalization and have created a work environment in which cultural diversity can be problematic. A U.S. company where punctuality is important and meetings always start on time faces adjustments if it opens an office in South America or France, where being 10 to 15 minutes late to a meeting is considered acceptable: being on time is called 'British Time'[21] Culture One powerful source has blown down cultural boundaries around the entire world. What is this influential tool? It is the Internet and its endless margin of discovery. With the Internet people can easily access someone half way across the world. They could converse with someone living a completely different lifestyle yet still have something in common, the Internet. If language is a barrier then a website like Flickr, a photo sharing site, lets people from Singapore and Germany alike communicate without words. The Internet in essence makes the world a smaller place. Someone in America can be eating Japanese noodles for lunch while someone in Sydney Australia is eating classic Italian meatballs. One classic culture aspect is food. India is known for their curry and exotic spices. Paris is known for its smelly cheeses. America is known for its burgers and fries. McDonalds was once an American favorite with its cheery mascot, Ronald, red and yellow theme, and greasy fast food. Now it is a global enterprise with 31,000 locations worldwide with locations

in Kuwait, Egypt, and Malta. This restaurant is just one example of food going big on the global scale. Meditation has been a sacred practice for centuries in Indian culture. It calms the body and helps one connect to their inner being while shying away from their conditioned self. Before globalization Americans did not meditate or crunch their bodies into knots on a yoga mat. After globalization this is a common practice, it is even considered a chic way to keep your body in shape. Some people are even traveling to India to get the full experience themselves. Another common practice brought about by globalization would be Chinese symbol tattoos. These specific tattoos are a huge hit with today’s younger generation and are quickly becoming the norm. With the melding of cultures using another countries language in ones body art is now considered normal. Culture is defined as patterns of human activity and the symbols that give these activities significance. Culture is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold, and activities they practice. Globalization has joined different cultures and made it into something different. As Erla Zwingle, from the National Geographic article titled “Globalization” states, “When cultures receive outside influences, they ignore some and adopt others, and then almost immediately start to transform them.” [25]

Pro-globalization (globalism) Supporters of free trade claim that it increases economic prosperity as well as opportunity, especially among developing nations, enhances civil liberties and leads to a more efficient allocation of resources. Economic theories of comparative advantage suggest that free trade leads to a more efficient allocation of resources, with all countries involved in the trade benefiting. In general, this leads to lower prices, more employment, higher output and a higher standard of living for those in developing countries.[26][27] One of the ironies of the recent success of India and China is the fear that... success in these two countries comes at the expense of the United States. These fears are fundamentally wrong and, even worse, dangerous. They are wrong because the world is not a zero-sum struggle... but rather is a positive-sum opportunity in which improving technologies and skills can raise living standards around the world. —Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty, 2005 Proponents of laissez-faire capitalism, and some Libertarians, say that higher degrees of political and economic freedom in the form of democracy and capitalism in the developed world are ends in themselves and also produce higher levels of material wealth. They see globalization as the beneficial spread of liberty and capitalism. [26] Supporters of democratic globalization are sometimes called pro-globalists. They believe that the first phase of globalization, which was market-oriented, should be followed by a phase of building global political institutions representing the will of world citizens. The difference from other

globalists is that they do not define in advance any ideology to orient this will, but would leave it to the free choice of those citizens via a democratic process[citation needed]. Some, such as former Canadian Senator Douglas Roche, O.C., simply view globalization as inevitable and advocate creating institutions such as a directly-elected United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to exercise oversight over unelected international bodies. Supporters of globalization argue that the anti-globalization movement uses anecdotal evidence[citation needed] to support their protectionist view, whereas worldwide statistics strongly support globalization: •

•

From 1981 to 2001, according to World Bank figures, the number of people living on $1 a day or less declined from 1.5 billion to 1.1 billion in absolute terms. At the same time, the world population increased, so in percentage terms the number of such people in developing nations declined from 40% to 20% of the population.[28] with the greatest improvements occurring in economies rapidly reducing barriers to trade and investment; yet, some critics argue that more detailed variables measuring poverty should be studied instead [29]. The percentage of people living on less than $2 a day has decreased greatly in areas affected by globalization, whereas poverty rates in other areas have remained largely stagnant. In East-Asia, including China, the percentage has decreased by 50.1% compared to a 2.2% increase in Sub-Saharan Africa.[27]

Anti-globalization Main article: Anti-globalization Anti-globalization is a term used to describe the political stance of people and groups who oppose the neoliberal version of globalization. "Anti-globalization" may also involve the process or actions taken by a state in order to demonstrate its sovereignty and practice democratic decision-making. Anti-globalization may occur in order to maintain barriers to the international transfer of people, goods and beliefs, particularly free market degregulation, encouraged by organizations such as the IMF or the WTO. Moreover, as Naomi Klein argues in her book No Logo anti-globalism can denote either a single social movement or an umbrella term that encompasses a number of separate social movements [38] such as Nationalists and socialists. In either case, participants stand in opposition to the unregulated political power of large, multi-national corporations, as the corporations exercise power through leveraging trade agreements which in some instances damage the democratic rights of citizens[citation needed], the environment particularly air quality index and rain forests[citation needed], as well as national government's sovereignty to determine labor rights,[citation needed] including the right to form a union, and health and safety legislation, or laws as they may otherwise infringe on cultural practices and traditions of developing countries.[citation needed] Some people who are labeled "anti-globalist" or "sceptics" (Hirst and Thompson)[39]consider the term to be too vague and inaccurate [40][41]. Podobnik states that "the vast majority of groups that

participate in these protests draw on international networks of support, and they generally call for forms of globalization that enhance democratic representation, human rights, and egalitarianism." Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton write[42]:

“

The anti-globalization movement developed in opposition to the perceived negative aspects of globalization. The term 'anti-globalization' is in many ways a misnomer, since the group represents a wide range of interests and issues and many of the people involved in the anti-globalization movement do support closer ties between the various peoples and cultures of the world through, for example, aid, assistance for refugees, and global environmental issues.

”

Some members aligned with this viewpoint prefer instead to describe themselves as the Global Justice Movement, the Anti-Corporate-Globalization Movement, the Movement of Movements (a popular term in Italy), the "Alter-globalization" movement (popular in France), the "CounterGlobalization" movement, and a number of other terms. Critiques of the current wave of economic globalization typically look at both the damage to the planet, in terms of the perceived unsustainable harm done to the biosphere, as well as the perceived human costs, such as poverty, inequality, miscegenation, injustice and the erosion of traditional culture which, the critics contend, all occur as a result of the economic transformations related to globalization. They challenge directly the metrics, such as GDP, used to measure progress promulgated by institutions such as the World Bank, and look to other measures, such as the Happy Planet Index,[43] created by the New Economics Foundation[44]. They point to a "multitude of interconnected fatal consequences--social disintegration, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment, the spread of new diseases, increasing poverty and alienation"[45] which they claim are the unintended but very real consequences of globalization. The terms globalization and anti-globalization are used in various ways. Noam Chomsky believes that[46][47]

“

“

The term "globalization" has been appropriated by the powerful to refer to a specific form of international economic integration, one based on investor rights, with the interests of people incidental. That is why the business press, in its more honest moments, refers to the "free trade agreements" as "free investment agreements" (Wall St. Journal). Accordingly, advocates of other forms of globalization are described as "anti-globalization"; and some, unfortunately, even accept this term, though it is a term of propaganda that should be dismissed with ridicule. No sane person is opposed to globalization, that is, international integration. Surely not the left and the workers movements, which were founded on the principle of international solidarity - that is, globalization in a form that attends to the rights of people, not private power systems. "The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this

” ”

usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic. Take the World Social Forum, called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda system -- which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called "pro-globalization" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes." Critics argue that: •

•

•

•

Poorer countries are sometimes at disadvantage: While it is true that globalization encourages free trade among countries, there are also negative consequences because some countries try to save their national markets. The main export of poorer countries is usually agricultural goods. Larger countries often subsidise their farmers (like the EU Common Agricultural Policy, which lowers the market price for the poor farmer's crops compared to what it would be under free trade.[48] Exploitation of foreign impoverished workers: The deterioration of protections for weaker nations by stronger industrialized powers has resulted in the exploitation of the people in those nations to become cheap labor. Due to the lack of protections, companies from powerful industrialized nations are able to offer workers enough salary to entice them to endure extremely long hours and unsafe working conditions, though economists question if consenting workers in a competitive employers' market can be decried as "exploitated". The abundance of cheap labor is giving the countries in power incentive not to rectify the inequality between nations. If these nations developed into industrialized nations, the army of cheap labor would slowly disappear alongside development. It is true that the workers are free to leave their jobs, but in many poorer countries, this would mean starvation for the worker, and possible even his/her family if their previous jobs were unavailable.[49] The shift to outsourcing: The low cost of offshore workers have enticed corporations to move production to foreign countries. The laid off unskilled workers are forced into the service sector where wages and benefits are low, but turnover is high .[citation needed] This has contributed to the widening economic gap between skilled and unskilled workers. The loss of these jobs has also contributed greatly to the slow decline of the middle class[citation needed] which is a major factor in the increasing economic inequality in the United States .[citation needed] Families that were once part of the middle class are forced into lower positions by massive layoffs and outsourcing to another country. This also means that people in the lower class have a much harder time climbing out of poverty because of the absence of the middle class as a stepping stone. [50] Weak labor unions: The surplus in cheap labor coupled with an ever growing number of companies in transition has caused a weakening of labor unions in the United States. Unions lose their effectiveness when their membership begins to decline. As a result unions hold

less power over corporations that are able to easily replace workers, often for lower wages, and have the option to not offer unionized jobs anymore. [48] In December 2007, World Bank economist Branko Milanovic has called much previous empirical research on global poverty and inequality into question because, according to him, improved estimates of purchasing power parity indicate that developing countries are worse off than previously believed. Milanovic remarks that "literally hundreds of scholarly papers on convergence or divergence of countries’ incomes have been published in the last decade based on what we know now were faulty numbers." With the new data, possibly economists will revise calculations, and he also believed that there are considerable implications estimates of global inequality and poverty levels. Global inequality was estimated at around 65 Gini points, whereas the new numbers indicate global inequality to be at 70 on the Gini scale. [51] It is unsurprising that the level of international inequality is so high, as larger sample spaces almost always give a higher level of inequality. The critics of globalization typically emphasize that globalization is a process that is mediated according to corporate interests, and typically raise the possibility of alternative global institutions and policies, which they believe address the moral claims of poor and working classes throughout the globe, as well as environmental concerns in a more equitable way.[52] The movement is very broad[citation needed], including church groups, national liberation factions, peasant unionists, intellectuals, artists, protectionists, anarchists, those in support of relocalization and others. Some are reformist, (arguing for a more moderate form of capitalism) while others are more revolutionary (arguing for what they believe is a more humane system than capitalism) and others are reactionary, believing globalization destroys national industry and jobs. One of the key points made by critics of recent economic globalization is that income inequality, both between and within nations, is increasing as a result of these processes. One article from 2001 found that significantly, in 7 out of 8 metrics, income inequality has increased in the twenty years ending 2001. Also, "incomes in the lower deciles of world income distribution have probably fallen absolutely since the 1980s". Furthermore, the World Bank's figures on absolute poverty were challenged. The article was skeptical of the World Bank's claim that the number of people living on less than $1 a day has held steady at 1.2 billion from 1987 to 1998, because of biased methodology.[53] A chart that gave the inequality a very visible and comprehensible form, the so-called 'champagne glass' effect,[54] was contained in the 1992 United Nations Development Program Report, which showed the distribution of global income to be very uneven, with the richest 20% of the world's population controlling 82.7% of the world's income.[55] + Distribution of world GDP, 1989 Quintile of Population Richest 20% Second 20% Third 20% Fourth 20% Poorest 20%

Income 82.7% 11.7% 2.3% 1.4% 1.2%

Source: United Nations Development Program. 1992 Human Development Report[56] Economic arguments by fair trade theorists claim that unrestricted free trade benefits those with more financial leverage (i.e. the rich) at the expense of the poor.[57] Americanization related to a period of high political American clout and of significant growth of America's shops, markets and object being brought into other countries. So globalization, a much more diversified phenomenon, relates to a multilateral political world and to the increase of objects, markets and so on into each others countries. Some opponents of globalization see the phenomenon as the promotion of corporatist interests.[58] They also claim that the increasing autonomy and strength of corporate entities shapes the political policy of countries.[59] [60] Google voice Stock ETF Boost Mobile (cheap cell phone service) Net-10.com (pay as you go phone) Shopzilla.com (price comparison)

The New Political Culture: the world has changed dramatically in the last few decades. The new “knowledge economy,” “creative class,” outsourcing combine in globalization, which operates in several domains: •

via finance and economic exchange stressed by the World Bank, and others,

via communication: computers/broadband/internet/contracting out, detailed by Manual Castells and Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat. Consider just a few common themes in all four areas, then how these relate to culture. In all four areas—of finance, communication, politics, and consumption—we see the same contours of a New Political Culture. It transcends the older debates about capitalism versus socialism, and left versus right. Instead of old conflicts of rich and poor (or in Korea the two regions) we see new, issue specific concerns, like feminism and environmental protection and many more, sometimes around internet groups. In contrast to hierarchy and tradition of the past, we see more individualism and egalitarianism, as expressed (Spread of interest groups via online facilitation).

•

*via free markets, small entrepreneurs, and a mobile workforce in the economy instead of longterm careers, strong unions, and large organizations dependent on clientelist banks or state loans

•

*via the internet and individual communication options like iPod and personalized selections, blogs, instead of limited choice large television channels or major newspapers

*via a new focus on the citizen, on neighborhoods, on individual participation and self-generated bottom up rather than top down politics. Traditional political parties and voter turn out are in decline. Localized, issue-specific groups are growing. Similarly the internet has added a targeted, issue-specificity to political campaigns in Korea. •

*via individualizing lifestyle, in dress, entertainment, spontaneity and volatility of choice. This same individualism which can be expressed politically is also expressed daily in people’s lives, where they choose clothes, food, hats, and where to spend their time. This extends the individualism to many new domains: in contrast to tourists traveling in a large group to a classic, fixed destination, or traveling to the same vacation home with your family. Instead young persons increasingly find, or search for, more uniquely personalized life styles.

(The internet helps to facilitate this need for individualism, especially with sites such as myspace and facebook.) More generally, this rise of consumption, lifestyle, amenities, and culture is captured in emerging new theories of “post industrial society” that contrast with more traditional workplace theories of which Marxism is the most extreme. (How does the internet facilitate the ever growing demands and needs of society with regard to consumption?) So, following these first sections, the question that first needs to be answered is: Is the salience of culture and participation in culture rising? (p. 7) (Yes, and the internet provides for its rise with sites that spark the interest and imagination of many web surfers. Online galleries of art museums could theoretically inspire people to visit these museums offline.) Inglehart argues that those living in wealthy circumstances in their formative years (14 through 16 years of age) regard non-material issues as important. Thus, because post-war generations were brought up in a secure and wealthy environment, they do not attach much importance to material issues and instead attach more importance to non-material issues, quality of life issues and henceforth culture. Following this materialistic logic, it can then be understood that in the more wealthy nations material problems are not perceived to be as very urgent, as most citizens have never experienced material scarcity. Consequently, in more prosperous countries individuals will direct their attention towards achieving a better quality of life by means of striving for self-actualization, participation in the arts and so on. According to Inglehart in the most prosperous countries, as where prosperity is high enough and people do not need to worry about their means of existence a rise of culture can be found.

Modern life increasingly may thus be characterized as a search for certainty and truth because people increasingly have to choose what they think is worth living for. What is more, they increasingly need to define and redefine their identity. Whether one should be free or not, what they

find beautiful and what not, what is valuable and what not are all questions that need constant answers in a world without any clear and dominant tradition guiding people. That issues of culture have become salient can therefore also be understood from the fact that in time societies have turned away from tradition and towards the individual (Heelas et al. 1996). (This search can be driven and facilitated by the internet and its myriad information channels). The analysis shows that both religion and prosperity equally contribute to the salience of culture. Both the materialistic logic as the logic focussing on institutional changes thus are confirmed. (p. 14) By wiring the world into networks, globalization and the internet have created super-empowered individuals who impact the global landscape. Super-empowered individuals are products of globalization and the internet. These “Individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly— unmediated by a state.” Indeed, “…all of them are now able to act directly on the world stage” (p. 14). Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her contribution to the international ban on landmines. She achieved that ban not only without much government help, but in the face of opposition from all the major powers. And what did she say was her secret weapon for organizing 1,000 different human rights and arms control groups on six continents? ‘E-mail.’ (p. 14) KEY FACTS: “the end of the Cold War and general global peace,” “the decline of major tariffs and trade barriers, and rise of global trade,” “new modes of communication: fax, Internet, fiberoptic cables, digitization,” “expansion of education for citizens in many countries,” decline of agricultural and industrial work, and rise of more professional, service-oriented, and increasingly technically-based jobs, where computers and machines replace people for basic tasks.

Culture is on the Rise - Why? Define globalization first. Discuss globalization in terms of the internet second. Discuss globalization’s three main dimensions, which are economic, social, and political, and how these impact the global community. globalization in its literal sense is the process of changing local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be understood as a process by which people across the globe are unified and function together as a single society. This process is a mixture of economic, technological, socio-cultural and political forces.

Globalization:

Globalization: