Sunday musings
Lots of interesting stuff in the papers today. A theme running throughout the day is the struggle to understand and manage how interconnected we've become through globalization. We read today of Zidane, and world's obsession with soccer; of the new baby Panda here in DC; of immigration; of the Mexican elections; of a leading Republican's letter to the President raising questions about the use of foreign intelligence gathering techniques being used here at home on Americans; of cell phone use in the Congo.
Despite rising global threats we live in a time of relative peace and prosperity. Our time is characterized as a period of rapid flow of ideas, technology, commerce, people and information. With the end of the Cold War and the Clinton-led effort to bring the former communist and non-aligned world into the global economic and political system, the modernity of the United States is being brought to all parts of the world.
The Washington Post's remarkable story on cell phone use in the Congo and how it is fundamentally changing the country is the must read of the day. It reminds us that almost half the world's 6 billion people are now on the global information network. And that the way most people will access this network in the years to come will be a wireless device like a cell phone, increasingly packed with other features that enable commerce and information exchange.
As the Congo story shows as the barriers to globalization are overcome, the velocity of its adaption increases. And this increase of globalization's velocity is I believe the greatest challenge facing the world today. People, societies, institutions can only handle, easily, only so much change. With such rapid changes, the norms developed in civil societies become threatened. Helping our country, and the people of the world understand these changes and manage them effectively seems to me to be the main goal of American policy makers today.
Here at home let's look at one salient debate through this prism - immigration. The immigration problem we are facing today really stems from the fact that people are now trying to move with the same velocity as the rest of global capitalism. Latin Americans like all people want a better life. Moving up to the US almost guarentees it. Easy to get there these days. Why not go?
As more and more people get onto this global network, and experience the velocity of the modern world, we should expect a much greater desire to migrate to places that offer greater opportunity, whether within a country or without. Hundreds of millions of Latins now know of the opportunity America offers; it is easy to get here; through cell phones you can better stay in touch with family at home, easing the pain of leaving; why not try it?
Putting 6,000 troops on the border is not going to stop this extraordinary new bi-product of globalization - a global desire to seek a better life, and the power and confidence now to seek it wherever it is offered. I wrote yesterday of the Republican's utter failure to understand or deal with the realities of our current wave of immigration. In this case they are acting as true conservatives, fighting against a rapid wave of change that is for many hard to understand. Their failure, and since they are the governing party, our failure as America to come to grips with the immigration challenge is one of many examples of how hard it is going to be for even advanced, democratic societies to deal with the changes to come from 21st century globalization.
The bringing of the whole world onto this global network has only just begun, and it will, as we can see from this Post piece on the Congo, start to challenge traditional ideas, assumptions and civil societies in ways we haven't even begun to fathom. In a few years, as most wireless devices become web-enabled, the rural entreprenuers of the Congo featured in this piece will be able to access this blog, and I hope, leave a comment.
And it would be appropriate to end this piece with an homage to the most watched television event of our emergent global society - the World Cup final. With billions tuning in this afternoon, including everyone in my home, it is likely that a son of Algerian immigrants in France will become perhaps the most world's most famous and admired man; and that the name Zidane will become spoken, texted and emailed perhaps more than almost any other word in human history. Allez les blues.
- Simon Rosenberg's blog
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