Article by Aniekan Ekah
INTRODUCTIONInformation Technology (IT) is a driving factor in the process of globalization. Improvements in the early 1990s in computer hardware, software, and telecommunications have caused widespread improvements in access to information and economic potential. These advances have facilitated efficiency gains in all sectors of the economy. IT provides the communication network that facilitates the expansion of products, ideas, and resources among nations and among people regardless of geographic location. Creating efficient and effective channels to exchange information, IT has been the catalyst for global integration. Recent advances in our ability to communicate and process information in digital form – a series of developments sometimes described as an “IT revolution” – are reshaping the economies and social lives of many countries around the world.
Products based upon or enhanced by information technology are used in nearly every aspect of life in contemporary industrial societies. The spread of IT and its applications has been extraordinarily rapid. Just 20 years ago, for example, the use of desktop personal computers was still limited to a fairly small number of technologically advanced people.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBALIZATIONThe Information Technology (IT) revolution has been driven by the extraordinarily rapid decline in the cost and rapid increase in the processing power of digital technologies. The digital device whose technological advance has perhaps been most crucial to the IT revolution is the microprocessor, the collections of millions of tiny circuits that serve as the “brains” of personal computers and that are being embedded in an ever-expanding number of products, from video games to cars to refrigerators. Over the past two decades, the processing power of microprocessors has doubled roughly every six months. Fiber optics technology enables data, including voices captured in digital form, to be converted into tiny pulses of light and then transmitted at high speeds through glass fibers wrapped into large capacity telecommunication cables. Hundreds of thousands of miles of these cables have been installed over the past ten years, boosting the speed and capacity of telecommunications networks. Another set of advances that has been critical to the IT revolution has occurred in fiber optics. Fiber optics technology enables data, including voices captured in digital form, to be converted into tiny pulses of light and then transmitted at high speeds through glass fibers wrapped into large capacity telecommunication cables. Hundreds of thousands of miles of these cables have been installed over the past ten years, boosting the speed and capacity of telecommunications networks. Advances in microprocessors, fiber optics, and a number of other complementary technologies, such as telecommunications switching devices and memory chips, have dramatically increased the speed, processing capacity, and storage space of computers and dramatically increased the speed and carrying capacity of telecommunications networks. THE SPREAD OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBALIZATIONThe spread of digital technologies has also been spurred by several unique attributes of information, the principal input and product of many IT industries. In contrast to more tangible products, like consumer goods, one person’s “consumption” of a piece of information does not necessarily reduce or eliminate the possibility that another person might benefit from the same piece of information. Furthermore, networks built upon the exchange of information, like the Internet, tend to become more valuable to existing participants as new participants link up with them. Finally, the cost of using digital technologies, such as Internet service providers, decreases as the number of users increases. All of these factors have worked together to promote rapid growth in the demand for and supply of IT products and services. During the second half of the 1990s, as more people bought computers and went on-line, the average cost of the equipment and services necessary to access the Internet declined. In contrast to more tangible products, like consumer goods, one person’s “consumption” of a piece of information does not necessarily reduce or eliminate the possibility that another person might benefit from the same piece of information. Furthermore, networks built upon the exchange of information, like the Internet, tend to become more valuable to existing participants as new participants link up with them. A network is simply a set of interconnected nodes. It may have a hierarchy, but it has no centre. Relationships between nodes are asymmetrical, but they are all necessary for the functioning of the network—for the circulation of money, information, technology, images, goods, services, or people throughout the network.
ADVANCES IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYAdvances in IT are producing many changes in our society. These changes have produced many benefits, but they have also raised several concerns. Innovations in IT have created new jobs, promoted the growth of new markets, and increased international trade and investment. However, the expansion of IT also introduces costs. Workers in certain sectors of the economy lose their jobs as innovations in IT create a greater demand for high-tech workers and introduce efficiencies that make jobs obsolete. Another negative consequence of the IT revolution is the inequitable distribution of access to IT, called the digital divide. If the new technologies are to fulfill their promise, these costs and concerns will need to be addressed. Experience with previous technologies suggests that prudent policies can help us effectively manage the risks associated with new technologies without harm to their benefits. Experience also suggests that the required policies must be developed through close consultation between government and private sector experts and stakeholders.
Because of its varying subtleties, globalization is often a difficult phenomenon to describe comprehensively. However, one aspect of globalization that tends to be most apparent in almost every facet of life is the emergence of technology – particularly the way in which technology is globally integrating the peoples of the world. The advent of the Internet in its unquantifiable shape and form has over the past decade provided a common platform upon which countries from all corners of the Earth are able to communicate and share information. Despite widespread usage and availability of new technology, the issue been brought to the forefront of the debate between advocates on both sides of the globalization aisle.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBALIZATION Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been implicated in the structuring and restructuring of human social relations since the days of cave paintings and fire signals. The development of the electrical telegraph and the telephone in the late 1800s marked a qualitative shift in the scope and power of ICTs, however. The new electrical communication systems brought disparate regions and peoples into an unprecedented, increasingly synchronous global network of information, trade, finance, and culture. In the 20th century, the emerging global telecommunication infrastructure was extended and its uses expanded by the development of radio transmission, satellite communications, and terrestrial broadband networks. More recently, digital encoding, storage, and transmission have allowed for data compression and the convergence of multiple formats into a common digital stream, further accelerating the speed and volume of global information and communication flows. At the same time, the diffusion of inexpensive personal computers, the development of the graphical user interface, and the establishment of common data exchange protocols have given users around the world direct access to an increasing mass of data, text, and multimedia documents-as well as the power to create and distribute such documents themselves.The integration and interdependence of global media and information systems have created new challenges and new opportunities. Globalization has facilitated positive forms of cross-cultural exchange, creating, for many, an unprecedented historical opportunity to learn about and benefit from the cultural diversity of the human species, but it has also smoothed the progress of cultural domination, threatening regional and national cultural self-determination and increasing the risk of global cultural homogenization and commercialization
CONCLUSIONMany issues remain unsettled, and the future shape of the global information and communication infrastructure remains largely undetermined, despite vigorous efforts by the dominant corporate, governmental, and inter-governmental players to secure a commercial, open-market model. And while the proponents of a more democratic and diverse New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) have lost ground significantly in the wake of the changes discussed above, new venues and voices are emerging in the form of global non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that take advantage of the new global network itself to connect disparate constituencies, share information and resources, and organize globally. This resource guide offers links to the principle policymaking organizations, corporate entities, and research programs shaping the new global infrastructure, and to the inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations seeking to influence the policymakers on a range of issues.
REFERENCESAlbrow, Martin. 1997. The Global Age: State and Society Beyond Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage
Commission on Global Governance. 1995. Our Global Neighborhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
Davidson, Basil. 1992. The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. New York: Times Books
Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah. Tradition, Change, and Modernity. New York: Wiley
