Set a New Direction

The word ‘globalization’ is over 400 years old. But a qualitatively new aspect began with the information explosion in the 1960’s. 

Globalization affects and challenges everything from the nature of states, national economies, to social relationships, etc. 

The process of globalization is uneven. It unites people and cultures as well as dividing them. There has been increasing disparity between rich and poor between countries and within them because of globalization.

In a globalized world, social relations are "lifted out" from locally bounded contexts and restructured across space and time (Anthony Giddens). Traditionally, relationships were contained within much smaller groups, clans, etc. They were face to face. For the past 300 years the State has been the largest container of such social systems. However, in globalization, the borders of states are not as impermeable as they once were – they are blurred.

Globalization means that space and time are receding in significance. It means the "death of distance". The world is getting smaller, and our sense of the familiar is expanding. Less of the world is foreign to us. It is actually coming to us.

Examples of experiencing the world as a single shared space:

• "skype me" Actually, don’t. I get enough out of the blue requests to chat with strangers from Asia (and many other places). I can turn this feature off, but…I…want…to stay on the global social network – which is why I also have profiles on digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Linkedin, etc…
• An online space game where 15 year old Canadian boy flies past a spaceship piloted by a 15 year old living in South Korea – and they wave at each other.
• I’ve played chess online with an Egyptian.
• People watching and experiencing news events at the same time no matter where they are (e.g. Sept 11). After hurricane Katrina, there was a global online survey: "do you think that hurricane Katrina is God's punishment?"
• Remote telesurgery: sharing the same operating room while on two continents. Surgical procedures can be carried out across the world with robotic computer technology. The first demonstration of remote telesurgery was reported in 2001 when surgeons in New York operated on a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg, France and used remote-controlled robots to remove her gall bladder. Remote telesurgery transcends all of the geographical constraints on specialized surgery.
• I remember watching a particular episode of the Canadian show ‘Correspondent’ a couple years ago. It takes us, via the camera, to a remote village in Africa. On camera, a traditional African farming couple tell their two teenage girls that their father has Aids and that is why he is dying. We all witness a private conversation in Africa, on a subject considered taboo. We see their ‘passive’ reactions as they hear this. They then ask that the girls get tested. "Ok". Again, on camera we witness the girls as they hear their HIV test results for the first time themselves. The two girls sitting side by side are told the results. The one hears that she doesn’t have HIV. She gives the African assent. Uh-huh. The sister is told that her results show that she does have HIV. She gives the same African assent. Uh-huh. On camera. We are sharing the same (private) space.
  

So we can easily see how globalization is all about the increasing dense and dynamic flows along global pathways of many things:

• goods and services
• Information
• capital and financial ($2 trillion a day circulates through the global economy)
• ideas, values and culture shared images, shared media (broadcasting yourself)
• people (tourists, migrants, refugees, criminals)
• global issues and problems
  

Globalization really does produce a different world in many ways. It is multi-dimensional. The context we are concerned with at Set a New Direction, is the socio-economic one – people who desire meaningful work.

Finding meaningful work today means understanding the basics of globalization. It’s not enough to just say "there is no job security today". It is better to understand the new ways of working. Then we will respond more effectively.

What exactly is the nature of "jobs" today?