In 2005, Thomas L. Friedman published a book titled “The World Is Flat” which primarily spoke about his travel to India and the different eras of globalization. The author took a trip to visit Bangalore, “India’s Silicon Valley” (663) with a small team of cameramen and reporters. Friedman compares his journey to India with Columbus’ and says that Columbus didn’t end up finding the actual India and called the aboriginal people he encountered ‘Indians’ whereas he reached the actual India, interacted with the actual Indians and was also looking for something different from what Columbus was after- hardware, algorithms, etc.- the sources of wealth in our day (664). He wanted to understand “why the Indians I met were taking our [the Americans’] work, why they had become such an important pool for the outsourcing of service and information technology work from America and other industrialized countries” (664).
During his visit to Bangalore, Friedman visited the Infosys- India’s leading information technology company- office headquarters and was thoroughly impressed. Features such as the large manicured lawn, swimming pool, fancy health clubs, restaurants, steel and glass buildings etc. mesmerized him. They even saw one of the largest flat screens in the conference room where Friedman was interviewing Mr. Nandan Nilekani, the then CEO of Infosys Limited. (665). Not only did Friedman get the answers to his questions related to outsourcing, but also got another idea into his mind. Mr. Nilekani told Friedman, towards the end of his interview, that “Tom, the playing field is being leveled.” This made Friedman come to a realization which filled him with excitement and dread. He was filled with dread because he realized that he was previously oblivious to the ‘flattening’ of our world. He was also pleased as he now has another topic to explore and discover. Understand the causes and impact of this process (666).
The author then begins talking about the crux of the whole essay. The eras of Globalization. Globalization 1.0 (1492-1800) was the era when the primary question was “where does my country fit into global competition and opportunities? How can I go global and collaborate with others through my country?”(666) Globalization 2.0 lasted from roughly 1800 to 2000. “It was during this era that we saw the birth and maturation of a global economy.” (667) “There was enough movement of goods and information from continent to continent for there to be a global market, and global arbitrage in product and labor” (667). Around the year 2000 we entered a whole new era, Globalization 3.0. The thing that made this era unique was the “newfound power for individuals to compete and collaborate globally.”(667)
While era 1.0 and 2.0 were driven mainly by the American or European businesses and individuals (even though China had one of the largest economies even then), 3.0 is more driven by a non-western and non-white group of individuals (668). hence, the 1.0 and 2.0 eras were mainly about businesses and the economy.
In the essay “Shooting An Elephant”, George Orwell discusses the nature of British imperialism. His essay talks about how he was an officer in the british colony of Burma, and the conflicts he faces while on duty there. He says that he feels like one of the Burmese people, that he feels like he is one of them, yet the Burmese just consider him an officer of the law and hence don’t let him into the community. One day an elephant went rogue and unfortunately kills a man on its way to the grassy patches on that land. By the time he took the rifle and spotted the elephant, he realized that most of the people from the town was following him to watch Orwell kill the elephant that caused chaos in their community. Orwell then felt compelled to shoot the elephant, which created internal conflict as he, personally, didn’t want to shoot the elephant because he thought it had calmed down now. Ultimately, Orwell did shoot the elephant, multiple times, to kill it and try to gain some respect from the Burmese.
However, isn’t globalization just the modern form of imperialism? Isn’t it an equivalent of international aggressions (Machan)? Considered from a historical perspective, globalization is the present stage of economic imperialism (Vilas, 70). Therefore, if imperialism is considered as a negative thing then should it be the same for globalization? Isn’t it also harming us in certain ways we don’t realize? Negative impacts such as rapid usage of our limited resources, increased carbon-dioxide emissions, increased world oil prices, increased dependence on other countries for essential goods and services, etc. of globalization haven’t been considered. He only focuses on the positive impact of globalization on our world which provides the readers with only half the view. Thus, Friedman isn’t looking at the negative impacts that globalization (modern imperialism) has created in our world both in the past and in present.
Then again, there are significant economic benefits, but they are not spreading as fast as Friedman suggests. In other words, “globalization is marching on, but the pace isn’t all that fast. The overall level of global connectedness still hasn’t gotten back to its all-time peak of 2007. The overwhelming majority of commerce, investment, and other interactions still occur within — not between — nations.” (Fox). Fox cites the DHL Global Connectedness Index, compiled by Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the IESE Business School in Barcelona, and Steven Altman, a lecturer at IESE. “The financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent global recession demonstrated that fragility, as trade flows shrank dramatically. Trade, as already noted, took a big hit and has now rebounded. The number of people studying or working outside their home country hasn’t changed much, while the information index has been rising fast. (The capital measure is a moving three-year average, because otherwise it would be too volatile to make sense of.) But the information flows have been rising from a pretty low base: Less than 20% of internet traffic crosses borders, and fewer than 5% of telephone calls do. The international calls that are made tend to follow immigration routes: of the international calls measured here, 41% are made from advanced economies to emerging ones. The route with the most calling minutes, by far, is from the U.S. to Mexico, and second is the U.S. to India.” (Fox).
Ultimately, I think it is safe to say that the world is progressing in the globalization aspect, which is necessary for economic reasons, but we still need to be more careful about its consequences. Find ways that are more eco-friendly and don’t deplete our resources rapidly. That being said, our world still isn’t completely globalized. In fact, we’re not even close. “So, the world is still far from flat. And it’s not even getting that much flatter” (Fox).