The Future of Globalization

Since the middle of the 20th century, the globalization of the world economy has been creeping onto the world stage. It began with corporations outsourcing low-skill jobs to poorer countries such as India and Bangladesh, and slowly escalated to outsourcing technical engineering and design work as well. Today, Apple outsources the vast majority of it’s work, and doesn’t feel those jobs are coming back. There simply aren’t enough qualified people in the USA, whereas rapidly developing countries in the far east are teeming with technically skilled workers, as well as a massive workforce of low-skill laborers. Though globalization has allowed the world as a whole to be far more productive, it is often criticized because of the imbalance it causes. It is not unheard of for employees doing outsourced work to be forced to work 20 hour shifts, while earning less in a day than most Americans earn in an hour.

But technology is going to change that.

In the last decade, the world has seen the explosion of  media facilitating collaboration and group-forming. Nearly anyone in the world can start a blog, connect to social media such as Twitter and Facebook, work together on Google Docs, share videos on YouTube, or all of the above.

At the same time.

With all their friends.

During the last earthquake in China, news stations caught first wind of the event via social media. Chinese citizens subsequently leveraged that same media to put pressure on the government for not building Chinese schools up to code, thus allowing the deaths of so many Chinese children. A million individuals complaining alone are no threat to government or business, but when they all use modern technology to express their complaints together, suddenly their millions of voices become one thundering roar. When individuals who are most hurt by globalization discover this voice, the world will change. Reform will occur, and globalization will either fall apart, or begin to balance itself out.

Electronic Borders

Laws, defined in terms of lines, are the foundation of justice in society.  When a line is crossed, a punishment is incurred. For a law to be effective, the line must be defined well enough for all individuals to recognize when it is crossed. In cyberspace, these law defining lines have not been well explored, and, as a result, are not clear. If someone locates sensitive information online, but doesn’t make a digital copy, does it still constitute theft? What if the information wasn’t protected? Common crimes do have digital equivalents; however, the nuances are different due to the nature of digital information. An example: do you become a thief if by glancing in a neighbors open window you see something of value? Hardly, law is not capable of regulating where individuals look. On the other hand, individuals have been taken to court for exactly this kind of digital window shopping. Before we can obey the law, we must understand the law, and before we can understand the law, it must be defined clearly and comprehensibly. In order to enforce justice in cyberspace, specific laws regarding digital conduct must be defined.