The Technological Determinism of Globalization
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Mark Steyn, writing in the National Review, related a story from a London Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi about a panic that broke out in Khartoum, Sudan, after a crazy rumor swept the city, claiming that if an infidel shook a man's hand, that man could lose his manhood. The most noticeable point about the story was a detail: The hysteria was spread by cell phones and text messaging. Think about that: You can own a cell phone yet still believe such absurdity. What happens when that kind of technologically advanced primitivism advances beyond text messaging? Why do I raise these stories? Because ever since I began writing about globalization, I've been challenged by critics along one particular line: "Isn't there a certain technological determinism to your argument? According to you, there are these ten flatteners that are converging and flattening the earth, and there is nothing that people can do but bow to them and join the parade. And after a transition, everyone will get richer and smarter and it will all be fine. But you're wrong, because the history of the world suggests that ideological alternatives, and power alternatives, have always arisen to any system, and globalization will be no different.”
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This is a legitimate question, so let me try to answer it directly: I believe that capabilities create intentions. If we create workflow platforms that allow companies to disaggregate any job and source it to the knowledge center anywhere in the world that can perform that task most efficiently at the lowest cost, companies will do that sort of outsourcing. The history of economic development teaches this over and over: If you can do it, you must do it, otherwise your competitors will — and there is a whole new universe of things that companies, countries, and individuals can and must do to thrive in a flat world. But while I am a technological determinist, I am not a historical determinist. There is absolutely no guarantee that everyone will use these new technologies, or the triple convergence, for the benefit of themselves, their countries, or humanity. Using them does not make you modern, smart, moral, wise, fair, or decent. It just makes you able to communicate, compete, and collaborate farther and faster. But it doesn't have to happen. To put it bluntly, I don't know how the flattening of the world will come out. Indeed, let me go even further and make a deeper confession: I know that the world is not flat.
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I am certain, though, that the world has been shrinking and flattening for some time now, and that process has quickened dramatically in recent years. Half the world today is directly or indirectly participating in the flattening process or feeling its effects. But I am equally certain that it is not historically inevitable that the rest of the world will become flat or that the already flat parts of the world won't get unflattened by war, economic disruption, or politics. There are hundreds of millions of people on this planet who have been left behind by the flattening process or feel overwhelmed by it, and some of them have enough access to the flattening tools to use them against the system, not on its behalf.
