When Small Worlds Collide

When Small Worlds Collide

The Industrial Revolution provided well-defined boundaries between communities, companies, nation-states, markets, and peoples established by the invention of the railroad. The new era of globalization or Informational Revolution breaks down all of these boundaries and shapes our lives by integrating technology, finance, and information into a single global market. E-Commerce globalization has created a system that is shaped by superpowers, supermarkets, and super-empowered individuals.

This new Globalization is a highly complex and interconnected international system of small worlds uniting knowledge ultimately leading to the end cultural wars and ways. The Lexus is what each one and country wants, but what is the price?

Cultural Genes

Biologists generally agree that the primary force behind evolution in humans is natural selection. With each generation the chromosomes and genes of the parents are scrambled to produce new mixes . The genetic evolution is parallel to the cultural evolution. They are linked and the mind is that linkage. However, there is a boundary between knowledge for the mind and culture. This is not a territorial line, but a broad, unexplored terrain awaiting entry from both sides. Technology is the tool that enters this terrain. Thus, the communal mind created by culture, which is a product of the genetically structured human brain, can now be exposed to all cultures, societies, and ideas. Some of them are Lexus while others are Olive Trees. Everyone can have the same Lexus; however there is only one unique Olive Tree.

Identity Crisis

"Few things are more enraging to people than to have their identity or their sense of home

stripped away. ... Because without a sense of home and belonging life becomes barren

and rootless. And life as a tumbleweed is no life at all. Olive trees...represent everything that root us, anchors us, identifies us and locates us in this world...." states Thomas L. Freidman. The underlying message here is fear. Our fear of the unknown, our fear that home will no long be, and our fear of not surviving. The Cold War spawned treaties to protect our Olive Tree from fear of our enemies. Now, the deal becomes the protection from our competitors. But the biggest fear is not from another olive tree, nor the Lexus. It is from the standardizing market forces and technologies of today, which tend to break down communities, steam-roll environments and crowd out traditions. This leads us to a loss of identity which in turn can create a crisis. The challenge here is to find a balance that allows contained globalization, keep our identity and reduce our fear.

Globalization through Miniaturization

Friedman makes a statement that, "in such a world, activists have to learn how to use globalization to their advantage. They have to learn how to compel companies to behave better by mobilizing global consumers through the Internet. I call this the 'network solution for human rights' and it is the future of social advocacy. It is bottom-up regulation or side-by-side regulation-not top down regulation"! What is new today is the degree and intensity with which the world is being tied together into a single globalize marketplace and the sheer number of people and countries able to partake of this process and be affected by it. This globalization involves the inexorable integration of markets, nation-states and technologies to a degree never witnessed before by enabling individuals,