IB Digital Society 4.2D Globalization Notes

4.2D Globalization

The core shift

1. Globalization is the growing connection and interdependence of people, businesses, and countries worldwide. It predates the internet, but digital systems have accelerated it far past what earlier trade or travel could reach.
2. Distance was once a real barrier; now a message, payment, or design crosses the planet instantly, and a company can coordinate work in a dozen countries at once.
3. This is where change, space, and power meet. Connection spreads wealth and opportunity, but it can also concentrate power and deepen inequality. Picture many flows of goods, money, culture, and data: whoever controls the pipes has the upper hand over the exchange.

A world without distance

1. The engine is digital connectivity: through the internet and mobile networks, people communicate, trade, and collaborate worldwide instantly and at almost no cost.
2. This collapses distance: a student takes a course on another continent, a small shop sells worldwide via e-commerce, and teams across time zones work around the clock.
   1. Connection rests on physical things: undersea cables, satellites, and vast data centres, most owned and routed through a few wealthy countries and firms. A borderless world still has a geography, and it favours whoever owns the hardware.
3. Power and space questions remain: flows are unequal in both directions, English and a few dominant platforms shape the exchange, and the poorly connected are left on the edges. Everyone is connected, but rarely on equal terms.

Global supply chains

1. A global supply chain spreads design, materials, parts, and assembly across many countries, coordinated by data.
2. A phone may be designed in one country, use minerals from several, be assembled in another, and sold everywhere; big data and tracking manage this in real time, moving parts just in time and switching suppliers to lower costs.
   1. The coordination is itself a digital system: orders, stock, shipping, and output tracked in shared software. This just-in-time model holds little in reserve, so a single delay can cascade down the whole chain.
3. A systems and power story with real fragility: tight coordination cuts costs, but it also means one delay can cascade down the whole chain. Brands and consumers in wealthy countries capture most value; suppliers and workers further down take the smallest margins, least security, and are hit first by disruption.

Cultural globalization and flows

1. Globalization is not only economic: through social media and streaming, ideas, music, language, and trends spread worldwide in days, and a song, slang word, or protest can go global overnight.
   1. Mechanism: a clip is posted, algorithms push whatever gains traction, and users copy, remix, and reshare it; the traffic is heaviest along routes the biggest platforms and languages already favour.
2. This raises expression and identity questions: because a few large, mostly Western platforms dominate, culture can tip toward cultural homogenization, where local languages and traditions fade under the same global hits.
3. Contested: some celebrate a richer, more connected culture; others fear a few industries set the global taste and smaller cultures lose ground. The same flows carry both effects, which is why whether globalization enriches or flattens local identity stays genuinely contested.

Uneven globalization and digital colonialism

1. Globalization does not reach everyone equally: the digital divide runs between countries as well as within them, and control of the underlying systems is deeply unequal.
2. Much infrastructure (platforms, cloud, data centres) is owned by a handful of powerful firms and countries. When a nation's communication, commerce, and government depend on foreign-owned systems, some call this digital colonialism: a new dependence where value and control flow outward to those who own the technology.
   1. Contested: supporters say platforms bring real services, jobs, and connection; critics say extracting data and profit while controlling essential tools echoes older colonial patterns. Both point to real effects, which is why the term is debated.
3. A power and values and ethics concern: a country reliant on outside platforms may have little say over rules, prices, or data, and its users' data may be stored and monetised abroad, so connection comes bundled with a loss of independence.

Taking stock of a connected world

1. Set connectivity, supply chains, culture, and control together. Digital globalization draws the world closer, spreads opportunity, and lowers costs. At the same time it concentrates power, deepens dependence, and shares the gains unequally. The same links that give a country access to the world also make it reliant on whoever owns them.
2. Control is now the central question: many governments push for data sovereignty, wanting citizens' data governed by their own laws. The core change question: is this an extension of old trade, or a transformation of how power and value move between nations?