Reading Blog 1: First Response To "Globalization: The Super-Story"

Easton Obojkovits

CAL 103

Prof. Middleton

January 21, 2013

How's it going friends? This week I read "Globalization: The Super-Story" by Thomas L. Friedman and I have to say that it was a very interesting read. Mr. Friedman talks about how the world is now more vastly connected with the new international system called 'Globalization' than it was in the old system called 'The Cold War System'. He states that during the Cold War system everybody was divided. I definitely agree with that statement. The US and the Soviet Union were at war and the world was forced to choose sides. Friedman says "The cold war was a drama of states confronting states, balancing states, and aligning with states. And, as a system, the cold war was balanced at the center by two super states, two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.(473)" Now with this new Globalization system, everybody is connected and the word that Friedman uses to characterize this is-web. The world is now a giant interlocked web in which people can now communicate across the world with other people and do many other things. Friedman says "Whether by enabling people to use the Internet to communicate instantly at almost no cost over vast distances, or by enabling them to use the Web to transfer money or obtain weapons designs that normally would have been controlled by states, or by enabling them to go into a hardware store now and buy a five-hundred-dollar global positioning device, connected to a satellite, that can direct a hijacked airplane.(474)" People now have the means to influence the world! Friedman used Osama Bin Laden as an example of what he calls a "super-empowered individual" Osama used the technology that he could get his hands on using the Internet and with that he orcastrated the events of 9/11. People can now get whatever they need, to do pretty much anything they want, thanks to the World Wide Web. If I wanted to I could learn how to hack using free lessons on the Internet and then from that I could hack a bank and steal all of the money. Thanks to Globalization this is now possible. Overall this reading was helpful in understanding the complex system of Globalization and how everything interacts and is intertwined.