Friday, August 29, 2014

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Thoughts and Reflections

Ben Howson, Modern World History 2
Mr. Angus
8/29/14


E.C.E stands for "Energy Climate Era", and the E.C.E is the era that we are heading into today. Tomas L. Friedman, who is the writer of "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" believes that the world's biggest problems are global warming and the population growth of the world. Friedman thinks that the world today is hot, flat and crowded. What Friedman is meaning when he says this is, that the world today is experiencing a huge climate change due to global warming, in which we are producing all over the world in huge factories, making what Friedman calls "fuels from hell." When Friedman called the world flat, he wasn't meaning the geography of the world was becoming more flat, he was talking about the global economy. Friedman believes that the flattening happened due to a couple of factors; "The invention of the personal computer", "the software and transmission protocols", and "the collapse of Communism and the fall of the Berlin wall." All of these things together created a "Unobstructed global marketplace" which means, tons of producers and consumers could buy or sell goods, and were able to come together with more people in more places to have a greater ease for less money. When Friedman says that the world is to crowded, he is talking about the population of the world, and that there are just to many people. The population of the world is increasing drastically every year, and because of this, is is making the world hotter, flatter, and a lot more crowded.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Globalization today and yesterday

Ben Howson, World History 2, per.3
Mr. Angus
8/26/14


Globalization in a very short definition is "the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space."(Manfred B. Steger) But it is really a lot more than that, globalization has lots and lots of little definitions, that come together to create one big definition. All of the little definitions are different from each other, like a puzzle pice, but they all come together to create one big puzzle. For example, globalization is an uneven process, which means people living in different parts around the world are all effected differently, due to the social structures and cultural zones. But also, globalization is "the time and space aspects of social relations."(James Mittelman) So both of these definitions would come together with many other definitions to create one definition.

The current state of the world allows pretty much anything to be globalized through and by technology by powerful satellites. The Al Qaida was able to globalize their video due to the fact that they could post this video to the entire world in a mater of minutes, and people did, because of the internet. The technology and global interconnections were the two things that made it posable for the world to see Bin Laden's speech.

Globalization has three assertions, and they are; 1) We are leaving behind the modern nationality, in which came from the 18th century; 2) We are moving onward toward the new type of post modern "globality"; 3) But we still have not yet reached this. Well to start off, globalization started in the 18th century, and it has been going on all the way up to day, and it is going on ward, so it has definitely been a slow and long process that has been taken place over many centuries. Globalization has been a very slow process, mainly because people don't hear things right away, and today we start to hear things that are happening in the world, because of technology, and lots of other things, but in the 18th century, things would spread a lot slower, due to that fact that you would normally hear my mouth, and letters. That is why globalization has been a long and slow process that has taken place over many centuries.