The Global Village Finally Arrives

Summary:
The author, Pico Iyer, opens the essay with the brief description of a typical morning. This initial description is ladled with various examples of living within a multicultural mecca, The world in this authors eyes, is attaining a level of globalization that once was only dreamt about, Italian food is served casually in a Saigon restaurants, and “burger joints” are popping up all over places like Japan. Reaching further, the greater dispersion of people is noted. For example arab, native to the middle east are one fourth of all newborns born in Brussels. America is the source of most of the adopted pop culture seen around the world.
People are also part of this globalization trending. The author brings to light that cities like Hong Kong and Paris, once a hub for exiles and nomads, are quickly becoming multicultural centers for the world’s people. Citizens of numerous country’s carve out a living in places like Hong Kong, bring with them their own costumes to the mingled with the countless of other people just like them living in the same city. Once this peaceful exchange of ideas an cultures was a slow one. Take for example the ancient Roman Empire that established a silk trade with china at the time. This same thing is happening, but on a much larger scale. Economic forces are driving people together and tearing down nationalistic lines that once divided them. People can travel around the world in mere hours and communicate in just seconds, this type of networking is tearing down the old bears and proliferating change. Countries like Iran, North Korea and other less connected third world countries are being put at a disadvantage in this light and are damaging their futures. America’s new role in this emerging world is not as a military superpower like it has been in decades past, but as a new multicultural superpower, a realm of idea exchanges.

Response:
I liked this article a lot, mainly because it took globalism as a positive idea. Much of what is talked about in these essays deals with the dangers of retaining identity in a global network and here it embraces this new step for humanity. The author points out some points that I found very interesting, such as the fate of third world countries and the role of America in this emerging “global village.” Countries like Iran and North Korea who shut off its people from the western world out of fear are put at a disadvantage. I do not think anyone is qualified to judge whether their determination of western culture as dangerous is correct. Be that as it may, they are with out a doubt but at an educational disadvantage because of it. Emerging technologies in countries like the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. are slow to penetrate the boarders of these countries. I’m not just talking about cell phones and televisions, but also tools for medicine and agriculture. It is no secret that there is a large exchange of idea’s at the collegiate level for many young people, exchange programs and higher learning based activities work to acclimate and shape the young minds of tomorrow. These young people are indeed becoming more unified because of this, however countries like North Korea are left out in the cold with it comes to this. It is not that they are just missing out on the new episode of the Hills, but they are slow to realize the potential of a new gene treatment of Down syndrome.
Another surprising point that Iyer brings to light for me is American culture’s role in the global network. I have been flooded with the idea, and accepted the fact, that American cultural dynamics are absorbed by people around the world, but I had never really given it a second thought until this essay. I have never lived outside of the U.S. so I have never really turned on a television to discover a show that originates from a country that does not speak my first language. I still do not really have a firm grasp on this concept from the other point of view. Personally I choose not to watch a lot of television, the program are always so sad and predictable. While I know that TV is the not only cultural outlet from which American pop-culture escapes, I would hate to see this absorbs by the minds of foreign peoples and used as a template for a global trend.