How Technology Has Impacted Globalization

Technology and Globalization Name: Institution: Course Code: Date: How Technology has Impacted Globalization Introduction The world is increasingly becoming interconnected and interdependent than ever before. Today, a person can work for a company which is located halfway across the world at the comfort of his/her home. A person can also do a face to face conversation with a friend or relative who is thousands of miles away in real time. Today, someone can visit another continent in hours and sometimes they can make to be home for dinner. These things were impractical several decades ago. Air travel which revolutionized transport and empowered humanity to travel faster than ever before is likely to be replaced by a new mode of transport through space which estimates that any destination on earth from any location on the planet will be in less than an hour CITATION Kor17 \l 1033 (Koren, 2017). It may sound impractical but historically some of the aforementioned things were unimaginable few decades ago. This is the power of technology and the aforementioned examples are some of the ways it has changed our world and brought us together. The world has shrunk into a village in terms of human interconnectivity. According to CITATION NSS09 \l 1033 (Sreenivasulu, 2009), technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes to get desired results. Humans have been researching and experimenting with technology to find out how to sole various problems through technology. It has led to globalization which is defined as ‘the increasing worldwide integration of economic, cultural, political, religious, and social systems. Economic globalization is the process by which the whole world becomes a single market. This means that goods and services, capital, and labor are traded on a worldwide basis, and information and the results of research flow readily between countries according to CITATION Oxf18 \l 1033 (Oxford Reference, 2018).’ Therefore, technology has been the main driver of globalization and it has continually been changing our world. Positive Impact of Technology on Globalization Globalization is one of the effects of technology. Some of the industries where technology has changed the world is through; transport and communication. Transport technology Almost every mode of transport has been changed in the world and it has become faster, more reliable, comfortable and increasingly cheaper. The first invention of man regarding transport was the invention of the wheel and shortly after, boats and ships were invented. This mode of transport alone eased transport of goods and services in the ancient world and globalization can be traced back to the inception of these ideas. Several millennia later, the railway transport, automotive, planes and air transport were developed. All these modes of transport depended on several inventions which were built on previous technologies. Since the industrial revolution, the world changed and the need for faster transport was necessary to support the industries and enable movement of people. Mobility of labor was necessary in the industrial ages and though it has slowed lately due to teleworking, it was one of the main drivers of cultural integration due to increased interaction of various cultures. The movement of people and goods since has increasingly became easier and faster. Lately, there are maglev trains which are the fastest man-made land-based transport system that is almost capable of reaching the speed of sound. Air transport reached a point of crossing the Atlantic in less than three hours several decades ago using the decommissioned Concorde planes. Now, several companies are developing technology which would make us travel through space and land on floating pads near our destination making travelling to anywhere around the world be possible within an hour CITATION Kor17 \l 1033 (Koren, 2017). Movement of goods and people are faster than ever before and it seems there is limitless potential of changing our world. Through improved transport technology everyone will live in less than a day’s travel of any other person which makes the literal meaning of ‘global village seem very real.’ Movement of goods and people helps people to intermingle and share ideas, cultural practices etc. and over times new cultures emerge and races emerge. In the 1950s, a new technology known as containerization was developed and standardized in 1961 which changed transport and movement of goods CITATION Joh12 \l 1033 (Johannes, Ham, Ham, & Rijsenbrij, 2012). It eased the logistical challenge of packaging goods and shipping them. Over the years, water vessels capable of carrying 18000 containers have been made to ease the movement of goods to their respective destinations around the globe. Today, products designed in United States such as iPhone are manufactured in China because it is cheaper. Indirectly, a United States company has employed Chinese people to develop products which will be used all over the world. Tea produced in Kenya is destined for consumption in London. Flowers grown in the Caribbean are transported to consumers in Russia within hours to show how the world has changed especially regarding movement of goods. Goods manufactured in China are consumed all over the world. Chances are that at any particular moment, anyone around the world is consuming a product produced either directly or indirectly in another continent. Transport has become efficient and the market for goods has expanded beyond international boundaries or geographical barriers due to development of transport technology. Today’s norm in transport was unthinkable centuries or decades ago but it has been enabled by advancement in technology. In future, transport will be reduced to minutes if technology continues to slash transport time and increasing the capacity of cargo weight and size. New technologies such as Hyperloop are under development and they promise to slash transport time more than trains while revolutionary spacecrafts are being designed and experimented to use the space for human transport. If these milestones are achieved, they will increase globalization especially expanding market for goods and integrating cultures. Communication technology Communication technology has changed the way people communicate. Communication is an integral part of changing cultures and changing the social norms. The first forms of communication were slow and relatively ineffective. Smoke signals and messengers were also slow and largely unreliable. Mailing came and telegraph which at the time of their inception empowered the world to communicate relatively faster over longer distances. The invention of telephone followed and it marked a turning point in communication. Over the millennia, humans have developed more sophisticated technologies which have changed the world. In the 20th century, newer technologies which have had immense impact on civilization were developed. The radio and television changed communication especially media. In the 1960s, came the computing era which ushered in the information era. Information era has changed the world because now people can communicate on the go. Most people have mobile phones which can enable an individual to call or send messages to anywhere in the world and it is delivered in microseconds. This was impossible several decades ago but it is the new world reality. The media has changed from dependency on newspaper for information to radio and Television. Information could now reach the intended audience faster and it is packaged in different format to even reach even those with special needs. Voice and graphical representation over the TV was a game changer in the communication industry. In the wake of the computing era, a new technology which is increasingly changing the world was developed. The internet has had a tremendous impact on the world especially regarding flow of information. The internet has become the framework upon which many other technologies have been developed. First, there is the emails. Email technology has replaced letters and it is d...