Globalisation Essay

Method

get the instructions
- get the essay question
- go over the course discussion
- get the lecture notes
- get the readings
- get info on "how to write an essay"
- go over the chat sessions
- do the library tut
- research the topic

need to know:
- topic
- how to cite
- tone to use (third person, etc.)
- position to take

follow the instructions

1st Essay

Write an 800-1000 word academic essay on globalisation. When did globalisation begin? Where did it start? What were the main changes in the world that supported its development? Is it restricted to certain countries? These are areas that you should cover in your essay.

Then linked to that question is the Group Presentation collaborative assignment.

Group Presentation

Produce a Group Presentation based on your 1st essay and expand it to include an analysis of globalisation as it is today. The 1st essay material that each group member brings along is combined to form an introduction to a discussion/presentation of what are some of the manifestations of globalisation. So the idea is to take the early research and build on that by showing some of the areas where it has grown into. The topics that I suggest that you can look at are: Movements like make poverty history; Live aid (including considerations of celebrity e.g. Geldof and Bono); Music; Sport; Business; Crime (drugs, corporate and Internet scams); e-Commerce/Business; environmentalism & global warming; politics; & media. In the course of presenting these topics you will consider their historical development, their success or influence and their durability in a global context.

Write a conclusion summing up the evidence that you have produced and point to what you think may be future developments in these areas.

Cover at least four from this list so that you can divide the presentation into 500 word units (including the introduction: the introductions will need editing together so that is an nearly equivalent job if you are dividing the work up amongst each group member.

Resources

Google Scholar
Swinburne Library
Papers from Dicky
Course Discussion Fri Mar 07 2008 20:21
- Wikipedia gives some information
- link via Google Scholar
Course Discussion Mon Mar 17 2008 07:55
- i'm finding "The World is Flat" by Thomas L Friedman interesting and helpful
- a government report
- a dictionary definition
- some papers on the subject
- a quick article
Course Discussion Mon Mar 17 2008 23:04
- Science and Religion - A Unitarian Universalist Perspective by Helen Lutton Cohen
Global Financial Stability Report

Research

What is an academic essay?

contains a Bibliography or Reference List section at the end
- Bibliography: everything ever read
- Reference List: everything cited in essay
How to Write an Academic Essay
Essay Writing Guide
essay writing guide

What are the specific requirements of this essay?

treat the first essay as an introduction to the topic:
- stay general
- in the conclusion point to the application that will be used to expand on it (i.e. as globalisation applies to the environment)
include a minimum of
- 5 references
- 1 quote
no need to take a position in the essay
- will take a position in the group wiki
any reference you cite in your text (McIntosh, 2008, p. 3) goes in the Reference List at the end
- no need for Bibliography for this essay

What is globalisation?

Chat Mar 26, CM: Two key areas for background. Build a picture of a world looking for opportunities to buy things, consume things and be entertained:

the emergence of business as the dominant form of economic and social organisation.
- post-fordism
- death of the welfare state
- shift from production to consumption (virtual world is about consuming rather than producing in the manufactured goods sense)
the internet revolution and the electronic demand for content:
- celebrity
- world sport
- global social movements (make poverty history)
- etc.

When did globalisation begin?

Colonisation
Taylorism
Fordism

Where did globalisation begin?

What were the main changes in the world that supported its development?

Is it restricted to certain countries?

Group Presentation

Here are some notes that will apply when I get to the group presentation.

Take a position:

Globalisation as it applies to the environment is a big hairy intractible-looking issue, essentially:
- We need to burn stuff to supply energy to create wealth to remove poverty, BUT,
- If we burn stuff we'll wreck the environment which will affect everyone even those not burning stuff, AND
- Developing nations have the greatest and poorest populations who will be demanding they burn stuff.
All sorts of nasty outcomes could eventuate. Lots of thinking needs to be done to manage the intersection of these two issues to avoid war and environmental destruction.

Admin

Craig's phone number

Thoughts

consumerism is the basic driving factor of globalisation

a precursor to a "meta federation" of sorts..?

References

(Worthington 2001)

Globalisation: Perceptions and Threats to National Government in Australia

Glenn Worthington Politics and Public Administration Group 26 June 2001

Essay

This essay reflects on the broad issue of globalisation, and suggests that it is essentially a good thing, with the central problem of managing the global environment being the central concern. What is globalisation? It's the The Future. When did it start? In The Past. Where did it start? Right here, on Planet Earth.

The idea of The Future has been relentlessly crafted, tirelessly honed, and continuously beamed out to the collective conscious of technologically advanced communities over all forms of cultural media, not least television, for decades. The Future as depicted in television shows like "Beyond 2000"; as promised by popular journals such as "Scientific American"; as speculated by films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey", anime such as "Ghost in the Shell", or cartoons like "Futurama"; and as simulated by console game after console game. That future, The Future, now, is more than an idea: it's a reality, for some. We're still learning to adjust, and still waiting for culture to catch up. This, in essence, is globalisation: it's a "connectedness" that has resulted from the state of the art in transportation and information technology, which in turn are the result of the wealth of knowledge and resources amassed and harvested by human civilisation to date.

Globalisation has been growing by degrees since the beginning of human civilisation (Sheshabalaya 2006). The signs of technological advancement giving rise the the visible beginnings of globalisation coming as early as the 9th century (Borghesi and Vercelli 2001). The overall trend in globalisation is an increase in trade and transport, both domestically and worldwide (van Veen-Groot and Nijkamp 1998).

The culmination for those on the forefront of the expedition of the Modern Project, the Modern Project being "Better Living Through Science and Technology", has been the realisation of that which was only dreamed of but decades ago. That is, the commoditisation and broad public access of: notebook computers that resemble "crystal balls"; colour flat screen monitors; compact discs; microwave ovens; mobile telephones; 3D simulations; the control of the forces of nature to provide always-on, always-connected, instantaneous communication with anyone, anywhere; electronic money; flight; pervasive surveillance; weapons of mass destruction; medicine; agricultural technology; genetically modified food stuffs; artificial intelligence (you can, in fact, ask a question of a search engine and get a sophisticated and timely answer -- for free); automated manufacturing; GPS navigation; resilient, aesthetic, cheap and robust materials; and even robots that will talk to you.

The Future has been a dream, a dream of being free from manual toil, and though far from over, in the large, it's been realised. It came, however, with a problem, and a twist.

The central problem of globalisation that humanity faces presently, is that The Future has not been realised equally for all members of the globe, and that humanity may not in fact be able to pay the price, in energy, that it costs to sustain, let alone expand. The twist is that the philosophical foundation for Modernism, the general philosophy underlying the Modern Project itself, undid itself, or at the very least discovered its limits, giving rise to the quandary that is post-modernism. In other words: the problem is one that can in essence be reduced to a problem of economics, that in turn plays out culturally and politically (Worthington 2001); and the twist is of a philosophical bent, having cultural and political ramifications in its own right.

Technological and social progress has seen the more traditional dichotomies that served to divide people become increasingly defunct: Communism vs. Democracy, Left vs. Right, East vs. West. These debates are old news. Communism and Democracy alike are becoming less relevant as the cultures which propound either are augmenting themselves with an emphasis on a capitalist market-based ideology more akin to the Feudal systems from which they were originally conceived. The Left essentially achieved its original goals, and the more sophisticated aspect of the debate has morphed from one of economics to one of Liberalism vs. Authoritarianism. Racial issues are far from resolved (Obama 2008), although they too can be expected to fade as the results of modernism meet more and more of individuals' base needs (Maslow's Hierarchy).

Technological progress has meant that the tedium and burden of material production is increasingly not applicable to great swathes of the populace. The nature of 'production' in sophisticated economies has changed from being the result of the labour of the body, to the labour of the mind. Sophisticated markets can reward a person with great wealth for the timely and brief application of their fingers to a keyboard, and more and more people have access to this reality. The ethereal nature of production in such societies has given rise to an emphasis on consumerism. Consumption being the flip side of production, production being necessary for growth, and growth being necessary for the social tenability of the capitalist model of resource distribution in a free society where individuals have a level of social mobility as "merited" by "the market". Consumerism could also be seen as a resignation to the emptiness and futility of the postmodern condition.

While technology has permeated contemporary societies and thus modified the nature of commerce, crime, education, communication, entertainment, power, and so on, from their prior conceptions in ways that are interesting to dissect, the truly pressing issue that has resulted from this technological progress is as it applies to the environment. This is especially the case given that technological advancement has not applied evenly across the now heavily connected globe, and as large nations such as China and India seek to enjoy the benefits of technological advancement that their friends in the West have, and even as the West continues to enjoy the benefits of technology, the toll on the environment is forecast to be severe.

In conclusion, globalisation is a connectedness that is the result of technological and cultural advancement. Globalisation began by degrees as technological progress in transport and information technology allowed. Globalisation, like human progress, is a function of technology; it is the inevitable consequence of the evolution of human civilisation, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is much that is good about it, and it has a lot to offer. Globalisation embodies change, and as things change there is much of interest to speculate about and discuss. The trouble is that we're burning too much too fast to make it all happen, and we suspect this isn't sustainable. This environmental issue is worthy of the most attention, as if we can solve the environment problem, then other social ailments ought heal themselves, for as Benjamin Disraeli said: "Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilisers of man."

Reference List

Globalisation: Perceptions and Threats to National Government in Australia Glenn Worthington Politics and Public Administration Group 26 June 2001

The Three Rounds of Globalization Ashutosh Sheshabalaya The Globalist October 19, 2006

Together we can move beyond racial wounds Barack Obama Sydney Morning Herald March 20, 2008

ANALYSIS Sustainable globalisation Simone Borghesi *, Alessandro Vercelli Department of Political Economy, University of Siena, Piazza S.Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy Received 7 December 2001; received in revised form 31 July 2002; accepted 19 September 2002

COMMENTARY Globalisation and sustainability: environmental Kuznets curve and the WTO Clem Tisdell Department of Economics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia Received 21 September 2000; received in revised form 30 July 2001; accepted 1 August 2001

TENTH ANNIVERSARY INVITED PAPER Globalisation, transport and the environment: new perspectives for ecological economics Danielle B. van Veen-Groot, Peter Nijkamp Free University of Amsterdam, Department of Spatial Economics, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands Received 2 September 1998; received in revised form 15 April 1999; accepted 22 July 1999

Globalisation Essay

By: John Elliot (6530419) For: Craig McIntosh Due date: 7th April 2008 Course: SSK13 Assessment: First Essay Tutor: Lorraine Wiki Group: 07

On Globalisation

This essay reflects on the broad issue of globalisation, and suggests that it is essentially a good thing, with the central problem of managing the global environment being the truly important concern surrounding the issue. What is globalisation? It's the The Future. When did it start? In The Past. Where did it start? Right here, on Planet Earth.

The idea of The Future has been relentlessly crafted, tirelessly honed, and continuously beamed out to the collective conscious of technologically advanced communities over all forms of cultural media, not least television, for decades. The Future as depicted in television shows like "Beyond 2000"; as promised by popular journals such as "Scientific American"; as speculated by films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey", anime such as "Ghost in the Shell", or cartoons like "Futurama"; and as simulated by console game after console game. That future, The Future, now, is more than an idea: it's a reality, for some. We're still learning to adjust, and still waiting for culture to catch up. This, in essence, is globalisation: it's a "connectedness" that has resulted from the state of the art in transportation and information technology, which in turn are the result of the wealth of knowledge and resources amassed and harvested by human civilisation to date.

Globalisation has been growing by degrees since the beginning of human civilisation (Sheshabalaya 2006). The signs of technological advancement giving rise to the visible beginnings of globalisation coming as early as the 9th century (Borghesi and Vercelli 2001). The overall trend in globalisation is an increase in trade and transport, both domestically and worldwide (van Veen-Groot and Nijkamp 1998). Globalisation is indeed a global phenomenon, unrestricted to any particular countries. Countries may elect isolationist foreign policy, but they do so to their economic detriment (Worthington 2001), and issues such as the environment bear on everyone without their taking any specific action.

The culmination for those on the forefront of the expedition of the Modern Project, the Modern Project being "Better Living Through Science and Technology", has been the realisation of that which was only dreamed of but decades ago. That is, the commoditisation and broad public access of high technology: notebook computers that resemble "crystal balls"; colour flat screen monitors; compact discs; microwave ovens; mobile telephones; 3D simulations; the control of the forces of nature to provide always-on, always-connected, instantaneous communication with anyone, anywhere; electronic money; flight; pervasive surveillance; weapons of mass destruction; medicine; agricultural technology; genetically modified food stuffs; artificial intelligence (you can, in fact, ask a question of a search engine and get a sophisticated and timely answer -- for free); automated manufacturing; GPS navigation; resilient, aesthetic, cheap and robust materials; and even robots that will talk to you.

The Future has been a dream, a dream of being free from manual toil, and though far from over, in the large, it's been realised. It came, however, with a problem, and a twist.

The central problem of globalisation that humanity faces presently is that The Future has not been realised equally for all members of the globe, and that humanity may not in fact be able to pay the price, in energy, that it costs to sustain, let alone expand. The twist is that the philosophical foundation for Modernism, the general philosophy underlying the Modern Project itself, undid itself, or at the very least discovered its limits, giving rise to the quandary that is post-modernism. In other words: the problem is one that can in essence be reduced to a problem of economics, that in turn plays out culturally and politically (Worthington 2001); and the twist is of a philosophical bent, having cultural and political ramifications in its own right.

Technological and social progress has seen the more traditional dichotomies that served to divide people become increasingly defunct: Communism vs. Democracy, Left vs. Right, East vs. West. These debates are old news. Communism and Democracy alike are becoming less relevant as the cultures which propound either are augmenting themselves with an emphasis on a capitalist market-based ideology more akin to the Feudal systems from which they were originally conceived. The Left essentially achieved its original goals, and the more sophisticated aspect of the debate has morphed from one of economics to one of Liberalism vs. Authoritarianism. Racial issues are far from resolved (Obama 2008), although they too can be expected to fade as the results of modernism meet more and more of individuals' basic needs (Maslow's Hierarchy).

Technological progress has meant that the tedium and burden of material production is increasingly not applicable to great swathes of the populace. The nature of 'production' in sophisticated economies has changed from being the result of the labour of the body, to the labour of the mind. Sophisticated markets can reward a person with great wealth for the timely and brief application of their fingers to a keyboard, and more and more people have access to this reality. The ethereal nature of production in such societies has given rise to an emphasis on consumerism. Consumption being the flip side of production, production being necessary for growth, and growth being necessary for the social tenability of the capitalist model of resource distribution in a free society where individuals have a level of social mobility as "merited" by "the market". Consumerism could also be seen as a resignation to the emptiness and futility of the postmodern condition.

While technology has permeated contemporary societies and thus modified the nature of commerce, crime, education, communication, entertainment, power, and so on, from their prior conceptions in ways that are interesting to dissect, the truly pressing issue that has resulted from this technological progress is as it applies to the environment. This is especially the case given that technological advancement has not applied evenly across the now heavily connected globe, and as large nations such as China and India seek to enjoy the benefits of technological advancement that their friends in the West have, and even as the West continues to enjoy the benefits of technology, the toll on the environment is forecast to be severe.

In conclusion, globalisation is a connectedness that is the result of technological and cultural advancement. Globalisation began by degrees as technological progress in transport and information technology allowed. Globalisation, like human progress, is a function of technology; it is the inevitable consequence of the evolution of human civilisation, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is much that is good about it, and it has a lot to offer. Globalisation embodies change, and as things change there is much of interest to speculate about and discuss. The trouble is that we're burning too much too fast to make it all happen, and we suspect this isn't sustainable. This environmental issue is worthy of the most attention, as if we can solve the environment problem, then other social ailments ought heal themselves, for as Benjamin Disraeli said: "Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilisers of man."

Reference List

Globalisation: Perceptions and Threats to National Government in Australia; Glenn Worthington; Politics and Public Administration Group; 26 June 2001.

The Three Rounds of Globalization; Ashutosh Sheshabalaya; The Globalist; October 19, 2006.

Together we can move beyond racial wounds; Barack Obama; Sydney Morning Herald; March 20, 2008.

Sustainable globalisation; Simone Borghesi, Alessandro Vercelli; Department of Political Economy, University of Siena, Piazza S.Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy; Received 7 December 2001; received in revised form 31 July 2002; accepted 19 September 2002.

Globalisation and sustainability: environmental Kuznets curve and the WTO; Clem Tisdell; Department of Economics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia; Received 21 September 2000; received in revised form 30 July 2001; accepted 1 August 2001.

Globalisation, transport and the environment: new perspectives for ecological economics; Danielle B. van Veen-Groot, Peter Nijkamp; Free University of Amsterdam, Department of Spatial Economics, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands; Received 2 September 1998; received in revised form 15 April 1999; accepted 22 July 1999.

Transcription of Audio Mark from Craig

(Ed: please excuse spelling errors and paraphrasing. This is a draft typed in haste.)

Hi John, this is Craig McIntosh, I'm doing an audio-mark on your essay. This is a new method for marking essays that we've been trailing here and in a couple of other subjects. They've met with so much success that we've decided we'd do it in this course too. There's probably two benefits: firstly I think it helps establish a more personal relationship between the staff and hte students in OUA. It's a little bit better than getting something written; a little bit better than even live chats, which are still sort of mediated by the keyboard and the screen. So the added personal contact that this gives seems to be of benefit to students. And secondly you get a better sense I think of what we think about the work that you've done. It's hard to give an overall impression when you're just writing corrections into the text.

Now the reason that I'm doing this rather than Lorraine is that she asked me to have a look at it because she thought that your writing style and the way you've approached it is more in my field than hers. Lorraine is a psychologist and I'm a sociologist, and she's probably right. I've had a read through of it, and it's very good; Lorraine and I had a chat about it as well. It's a particularly good essay. It requires a bit of a reading into it I think in order to grasp the concepts and accept the way that you've represented some of the concepts, but I was happy to do it. So, let's have a go through it.

Firstly, the first paragraph... I see that you're setting the scene. "What is globalisation? It's the The Future. When did it start? In The Past. Where did it start? Right here, on Planet Earth." I understand now that you're going to carry through the cultural concept of the "The Future", I assume the capital T for The is intended, all the way through the essay. I accept that, and that's quite a good concept in I assume the sense that Western culture in particular (politics, media and economics), is always talking about the future and the future is idealised and commodified, and if that's what you're trying to get across, and that's what I'm reading, then I'm happy to deal with it in that context. But, you could probably do without that first paragraph. I don't think that first paragraph adds much to it. So, get rid of that. Or, no... not get rid of it. Rephrase it so that it's not quite so cute, or quite so twee. Because I see the need that you have to introduce this notion of "the future" in order for the second paragraph to work. So that's my comment about the first paragraph.

Then the second paragraph, I see it goes on to set up this notion of the future in a cultural context. And I'm reasonably happy with that, I understand if I was reading this for the first time that I'm looking for the rest of the essay to be sort of biased (which isn't a bad thing) toward cultural interpretations. And then you've hinted that there may be a little bit more content in terms of your transportation and information technology which is probably, well information technology in particular, is probably essential to have in the essay.

Your third paragraph. The bottom of the first page. Yes it has been growing since the beginning of human civilisation. Starting with the 9th century. What I'd like here I suppose... you've told me that it's historical, you've told me that it goes back down through the ages, that the 9th century is the marker that you'd like to start at, that there is a trend in the increase in trade and transport across the domestic and worldwide environments, and that it's a global phenomenon. And then the isolationist foreign policy and that sort of thing. I'm hoping then that you'll carry on and tease that apart a bit. Because all of these are claims to knowledge, and when you have a claim to knowledge, despite the fact that you've given me good references by the looks of it for all of these, you're still talking about the generality, so you need to unpack it. The visible beginnings of globalisation in the 9th century were what? What are these overall trends that have lead to an increase in trade and transport? You say "globalisation is indeed a global phenomenon, unrestricted to any particular countries", but then in the next sentence you indicate that there are certain practices from some countries that might then bar them from inclusion, through a number of means, and you talk about economic detriments, and then the environment may also be a barrier to inclusion, so I'll wait and see... but I'd like to see those unpacked a bit in the rest of the essay.

So we move on to the top of the first page, and the first paragraph there, "the culmination for those on the forefront of of the expedition of the Modern Project, the Modern Project being "Better living through science and technology", has been the realisation of that which was only dreamed of but decades ago." Um... that's... ah. It's not quite mangled but that sentence has implications that really aren't clear. You've put "Modern Project" in capital letters, should I know this? Should I know what the Modern Project is, or are you in fact talking about the Modernist Project, and Modernism, and the development of Modernism in economic and knowledge terms, stemming from the scientific revolution in the middle of the 1700s? You then go on in that sentence to put in inverted commas "better living through science and technology", um, I need to know what that is. You've put it in double inverted commas, which indicates that it's a.... it's should be a phrase or a sentence that's a.... it's either conversation, which it's obviously not, or a phrase that's used sufficiently commonly for us to be able to identify it, and those double inverted commas are sort of markers for identification, but I don't know what that is. You're obviously not quoting from somewhere, or you'd have a reference in after that, so I need a little more on that. Then you go on to say "that is, the commoditisation and broad public access of high technology", do you mean "to high technology"? Um, "in the form of notebook computers that resemble crystal balls", um... OK. In terms of their ability to look in to the future? If that's what you're indicating..? "Colour flat screen monitors, compact discs, microwave ovens, ..." OK, these are all lists... this is basically a paragraph of list. A list of sort of all of the modern accoutrements. Or the accoutrements of globalisation even, rather than modernity, because the accoutrements of modernity would go back to much earlier and in fact be pre-technological. "You can in fact ask a question of a search engine and get a sophisticated and timely answer for free". Yeah, but that's not artificial intelligence. That's just a database. "Automated manufacturing, GPS navigation, ..." Um, OK. What are they, what are these things, what role do they play in globalisation? You actually haven't said that these are factors in globalisation. These may be factors in "progress", which is probably the meaning that you can take out of this paragraph, but apart from that I'm not sure. Commoditisation... well, they are commodities, so they are going to be commodified. Commoditisation, or commodification you would say is when you're turning something that's not a commodity into a commodity, like a footballer or a tennis player is commodified becomes a brand, and that's how I'd see commodification. But anyway, we'll carry on and see how it goes.

"The future has been a dream, a dream of being free from manual toil, and though far from over, in the large, it's been realised. It came however with a problem and a twist," OK... the future metaphor I understand, but you're using globalisation and the future separately, and so then now the essay is divided between these two definitional concepts, not just the one. So, are you writing an essay about the future, or are you writing an essay about globalisation?

You go on to say then that "the central problem that humanity faces presently is that the future has not been realised equally for all members of the globe, and humanity may not be able to pay the price in energy that it costs to sustain it." OK... that's fine. That's a reasonable observation so you're starting to bring environmentalism into it, "the twist is that the philosophical foundation of modernism, the general philosophy underlying the Modern Project itself, undid itself, or at the very least discovered its limits, giving rise to the quandary that is post-modernism." Um... OK, how did it do that? Why did post-modernism arise in juxtaposition to or contradistinction from modernism? What are the factors that contributed to its undoing? You go on to say then that "the problem is one that in essence can be reduced to one of economics that in turn plays out culturally and politically, and the twist is of a philosophical bent, having cultural and political ramifications in its own right." Um... that sentence doesn't actually say anything. I say that with respect, but... there are a lot of words in there, but all of them require unpacking. This is the problem of the modernist project undoing itself, I'm assuming is the problem to which you are referring in that last sentence. But modernism really wasn't undone because of the problem of economics, I mean modernism was... I suppose on the most fundamental level modernism was undone because of its certainty, because of its linear nature, and because of its hierarchical attitudes: so there were experts, experts could contain/corral knowledge in the service of their own arguments, people were excluded from those arguments... I mean the postmodernist movement was a challenge to all of those certainties. To the extent that economics was a certainty I suppose it challenged economics, but really its challenge was to philosophy, knowledge, and the role of the expert and the alienation of those who weren't to a subjugated position. So I can accept that economics may have been a factor, but that was only a small factor in the undoing of postmodernism, because it was really a philosophical movement, rather than a sort of pragmatic economic movement. I mean, postmodernism didn't move away from modernism for reasons driven by economics. And you say "that in turn plays out culturally and politically," OK... how? Where? That's just a claim, and you need to unpack these claims, in order to sort of "win the point", if you like. "And the twist is of a philosophical bent, having cultural and political ramifications in its own right." OK, yeah? But what is the twist? I can't work out what the twist in here is? Again you're making claims, but not unpacking those claims. So you need to be wary about that John.

Now, moving on to the next paragraph: "technological and social progress has seen the more traditional dichotomies that served to divide people become increasingly defunct." OK..., i.e. "Communism vs. Democracy, Left vs. Right, East vs. West." OK, yep, fine. I'd go... I suppose communism isn't strictly the opposite of democracy, I think the real battle was communism and capitalism, because it was the capitalist practices that instituted economics -- right-wing, neo-liberal, economic-rationalist, market-based economics -- and that was the problem that you referred to above, but that's a minor point I'm happy to accept communism vs democracy. Regarding "these debates are old news", only in relative terms. I mean you talked earlier about globalisation going back to the 9th century, and in terms of the battle between communism and capitalism, it really only started at the end of World War II, in 1945 [1], was only really resolved in 89, sort of metaphorically when the Berlin Wall was knocked over. So it's not that old, in terms of modern, immediate, real-time, technology that we experience now, yeah, yesterday is old. In terms of you're sort of categorising this for the sake of the essay it's probably not that old. But that's not a big point. "Communism and democracy alike are becoming less relevant as the culture which propound either are augmenting themselves with an emphasis on a capitalist market-based ideology more akin to the Feudal systems from which they were originally conceived." OK... I see your point. When you're writing an essay try to write for an intelligent but uninformed in the specific area of the essay question reader, so that then you are encouraged to again unpack what you've got to say. While I don't disagree with that sentence, dense as it is, there are lots of concepts that you need to unpack there. The notion of them augmenting themselves: how, and why? The capitalist cultures probably aren't augmenting themselves in the way that you're implying, whereas the few communist countries left, and really we're only talking about China, because the other communist countries left like say Laos, or Venesula, Havanna, Cuba, and very few others really, aren't that influential. But China certainly is augmenting itself through market-based ideology, and it's probably worth talking a little about the Feudal system in relation to those two, because I don't really... I mean capitalism emerged out of the Feudal system, but was not built on the Feudal system, I mean capitalism really broke up the Feudal system and the people who benefited from the break up would have been glad to see it go, the people who didn't would have wanted it back. "The left essentially achieved its original goals", which were? "And the more sophisticated aspect of the debate has morphed from one of economics to one of Liberalism vs Authoritarianism." Um... yeah. What are the components of authoritarianism and liberalism, who are the examples of liberalism, which liberalism are you talking about, are you talking about the individualist notion of liberalism developed by John Stuart Mill, where does that put neo-liberalism, which is argued to be the form of liberalism we have today? But if again you're just reconstituting communism and capitalism as liberalism and authoritarianism as the advancement of that debate okay, but still you need to unpack that. "Racial issues are far from resoved", um, yeah. "Although they too can be expected to fade as the results of modernism meet more and more of individuals basic needs." But you've said that modernism has given way to postmodernism, and the notion of meeting individuals needs is more to do with the old modernist form of communism where all individuals are taken care of as a collective because the new postmodern world is about individuals and certainly a postmodern market economic world is about individuals rising, and competing to rise about one another, and that's built on the whole notion of "user pays" I suppose. So people's needs may not be looked after in this new form of modernism. And then you've got "Maslow's Hierarchy" in brackets after it, and I don't see how that fits.

The bottom paragraph of the second page: "Technological progress has meant that the tedium and burden of material production is increasingly not applicable to great swathes of the populace." Ah, ok... what is entailed in this technological progress? What are the aspects that you're talking about? Where is the tedium and burden? One of the arguments that you take from the old modernist era is that Taylorism, which was scientific management, which was essentially a time and motion study on how people worked on a production line, and how their bodies could be made to conform to the production line rather than the production line conform to them is the classic example of tedium and burdensome activity in terms of production and the argument would be that under postmodernism or in the case of economics post-Fordism there's much more accommodation to individuals and human-machine interaction. There again, I can accept that call-centres probably fall into the Taylorist category, in a postmodern context. Need to unpack that a bit. "the nature of production in sophisticated economies has changed from being the result of the labour of the body to the labour of the mind." There's... I was going to say there's no argument about that, but there's probably some argument about that, but I understand the broad sweep of that statement. There's a lot talked about in the Knowledge Economy, and in Australia we're having a boom because we're able to dig stuff up, put it on the back of big trucks, stick it in ships and send it overseas. But there are lots of European and Asian economies that are building themselves in that way certainly.

So... where are we. "Sophisticated markets can reward a person with great wealth, for the timely and brief application of their fingers to a keyboard," um, yeah, that's true to some extent, "and more and more people have access to this reality." In sort of ideological terms they do, in reality I'd like to see you produce the evidence. "The ethereal nature of production in such societies has given rise to an emphasis on consumerism," that's certainly true, and it's not necessarily the rejigged nature of production, which is really just shipping production off-shore and then us trying to faf around finding something else to do, and in the mean time Go Shopping! I understand and take the point that you're making. "Consumption being the flip side of production," certainly. "Growth being necessary for the social tenability of the capitalist model of resource distribution in sophisticated economies where individuals have a level of social mobility as merited by the market." OK... yes, there's no disagreement with that. "Consumerism could also be seen as a resignation to the emptiness and futility of the postmodern condition." Um, yes. I'd like to see... well, my problem through that paragraph in particular, and maybe the one at the top of the second page, is that there's no references for that. And then there are no references for the rest of the essay. Now there is some reasonably sophisticated concepts in there. My suggestion isn't that you're not capable of handling these sophisticated concepts, but the ideas must have been taken from somewhere. You must have done some reading. And I'm looking at the reference list and there's no indication of what you're read to have produced that material. Now I'm familiar with a lot of this material because it's the area that I work in, and there's a lot of a fellow called Zygmunt Bauman in there. But I'd like to see some reference material in there. One of the important things you need to learn in the early stages of writing for academia is yes one you have to produce support, but two that support has to be either built on direct quotes, and that's generally what happens in people's early career, or the evaluation of others' ideas rendered in your own words and then constructed in an argument. So even if you're not using other people's words, and you're not taking direct quotes out, but you're using people's ideas that you've formulated in your own mind, you need to acknowledge those, or that's plagiarism. What I'm talking about at the moment is in the technical sense, because I'm not accusing you of that, I'm just trying to warn you that this needs to be kept in mind, because it's one of the serious problems we have, particularly with modern technology where you can lift whole essays from the internet. So I wouldn't mind hearing back from you about some of the material where the ideas came from, and from whom they came.

So moving on to the next paragraph, "while technology has permeated contemporary societies and thus modified the nature of commerce, crime, communication, education, entertainment, power, and so on, from their prior conceptions in ways that are interesting to dissect, the truly pressing issue that has resulted from this technological progress is as it applies to the environment." That's too big a sentence, and it's not quite a sentence. You need to reconstruct that end bit, because you've mixed up the object and the subject. There are two sentences there at the very least. Now, if what you're saying is that... so you're saying that technology has modified a certain number of things... "from prior conceptions", OK, so essentially you're saying that we think about things differently, but despite the transformation of these things, there's one really important thing, and that's the environment. You need to say that more clearly. "This is especially the case given that technological advancement has not applied evenly across the now heavily connected globe, and as large nations such as China and India seek to enjoy the benefits of technological advancement that their friends in the West have, and even as the West continues to enjoy the benefits of technology, the toll on the environment is forecast to be severe." OK, you're sort of saying the same thing again, and just including China and India in that. So to the extent that that is unpacked I suppose it's unpacked, but it's really not making it clear where these pressures are coming from, how they're manifesting themselves, and is there a history to it or has it just emerged with the technological revolution. Because you have to say that the damage to the environment is being done by heavy industrial pollution and industrial activities rather than the technological activities. So you would say that what we're experiencing now is sort of pre-postmodern, is modernist heavy industry, and the enormous consumption of raw material and then their discharge into the environment. Now having said that I can see that China and India are still engaging in this, but they're... you need to make the point that it's not the technology that they're engaging in, it's the old fashioned modernist industrial production processes that are still contributing to the environment. So, probably worth unpacking that a little.

"In conclusion globalisation is a 'connectedness' that is the result...", a connectedness between? "that is the result of technological and cultural advancement. Globalisation began by degrees as technological progress in transport and information technology..." Yeah, you didn't actually unpack any of that. What's the technological progress in transport? Are you talking about the jet engine...? What else? Apart from that if we're simply talking about transport then you're not talking about "virtual transport", you're talking about real transport, that's still pretty modernist, trucks, planes, trains, ships, cars, and so on. So I'd need a bit of unpacking about that. Information technology... sure. But probably more specifically the world wide web and the internet and the development of the personal computer in the laptop and desktop form, and the ubiquity of those things now I'd be making a point about. "Globalisation like human progress is a function of technology," um, yes. "It is the inevitable consequence of the evolution of human civilisation." Um, that's a big call. It's... um... is it? Is there an inevitability that there'll be that sort of technological progress? And is it evolutionary, or are we hitting a point now where we're starting to see that those practices are going to see us devolving, rather than evolving? Because you're making the point up there that there's this enormous threat from human progress to the producers of that progress. So I'd try and modify that if you can. "There is much that is good about it, and it has a lot to offer." You need to make it clear what "it" is. Is it human evolution, is it globalisation, is it technology? "Globalisation embodies change there is much of to speculate about and discuss," yes. That's a bit of a motherhood statement. You need in the conclusion to be restating your arguments in an abbreviated form and coming to some form of tentative conclusion rather than making statements about what you could think and talk about around this issue. "The trouble is that we're burning too much too fast to make it all happen," burning what? Fossil fuels? And to make what happen? "And we suspect this isn't sustainable," so obviously we're talking about global warming, but that sentence itself is ambiguous, it doesn't actually nail down what you're in fact talking about, if anything at all. So you need to unpack that sentence a bit. "This environmental issue is worthy of the most attention, because if we can solve the environmental problems then other social ailments ought heal themselves. For as Benjamin Disreali said "Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilisers of man."" So we're back to a Modernist, I suppose!

Now, John. This essay demonstrates very skillful use of the English language, skillful use of sentence construction, although they probably can get a little convoluted because of their length, and the attempts to parse meanings in very long sentences have fallen over a couple of times. There's obviously some, I would assume, wide reading in there, or wider reading in there than you're acknowledging here, and I'd like to see that. It's a sophisticated approach to writing a relatively basic essay, and I think to a certain extent the sophistication has undone you, because I really haven't got a sense of what Globalisation is in terms of the nuts and bolts. I've got inklings about what it could be, and what it entails, but these are just threads, in fact you've sort of just left the reader to weave together him or herself in order to make sense of this, and probably, again if I was just a reader and I picked this up to read it to find out about globalisation it would send me off to go and find definitions, so that I could really understand what you've done, and what you've had to say. So I applaud the sophistication and the relative elegance of a lot of it. The content needs unpacking and beefing up in terms of detail, and I really would like to see some more references to explain some of the content that has appeared there. And if you could do that for me that'd be terrific, and then I could review the mark I'm giving it. At the moment I'm going to give it 13/20 which puts you sort of borderline pass/credit, because I've got to acknowledge the sophistication of it, but the content is the thing that I'd like you to look at, and the methodology, the way you don't unpack the meanings, the way you're making claims and making sort of bald statements that you in the way you write them have an expectation of being understood without being supplemented with research and support. So they're the things that I want you to have a think about, and get back to me on, and we can have discussion about this. I enjoyed reading it, and let's do some more on it over the next week or so if you'd like. Thanks John.

Draft Revision of Essay

This is a work in progress.

On Globalisation and the Environment

This essay introduces the dual issues of globalisation and the environment circa 2008. The essay suggests that the ongoing development of globalisation is essentially a positive occurrence -- that globalisation counts as progress in the development of human civilisation. The essay urges the reader to consider the import of the problem of managing the quality and habitability of the global environment in a context where globalisation continues to advance. A conception of contemporary reality is presented, along with recent and historical attitudes toward that reality; an effort is made to explain how globalisation occurs within that reality; and a discussion about how that reality bears on the global community and the global environment ensues. The goal of this essay is to paint globalisation in a positive light, and to encourage the reader to give due consideration to the economic, social and technological practicalities of managing the environment in this global context.

Coinciding with the commoditisation of the television in developed communities has been the idea of The Future. This idea of The Future has been relentlessly crafted, tirelessly honed, and continuously beamed out to the collective consciousness of technologically advanced communities over all forms of cultural media, not least television, for decades. The Future: as depicted in television shows like "Beyond 2000"; as promised by popular journals such as "Scientific American"; as speculated by films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey", anime such as "Ghost in the Shell", or cartoons like "Futurama"; and as simulated by console game after console game. That future, The Future, now, is more than an idea: it's a reality, for some. Communities for which The Future has become reality are still learning to adjust, and still waiting for culture to catch up. This idea of The Future is, in essence, the reality of globalisation: it's a "connectedness" between parties in trade and culture that has resulted from an "empowerment" afforded by the state of the art in transportation and information technology.

Globalisation has been growing by degrees since the beginning of human civilisation. As Ashutosh Sheshabalaya put it somewhat pointedly in his article in The Globalist (Sheshabalaya 2006), "we would do well to understand, once and for all, that globalisation is not a new thing. It has been with us since the dawn of history." Sheshabalaya goes on to isolate three rounds of globalisation, being first the exchange of ideas among ancient India, China, Greece, Rome, Babylon and Egypt; then second the period of the Industrial Revolution (late 18th and early 19th centuries) where he notes "the early 19th century was a time of global equity. There may have been significant poverty inside nations -- but there was much less between them." Sheshabalaya attributes to the rise of the British Empire the loss of global equity during the second round, marking the beginning of his third round of globalisation with the end of World War II. Thereafter "the rise of China and India," and now "a return towards global equity."

In their paper noting empirical evidence for "a worldwide increase in environmental degradation and economic inequality," Borghesi and Vercelli (2003) take a view of globalisation through the lens of commerce. They state that the economic aspect of globalisation, the integration of world markets, was under way as early as the 9th century -- though they do not cite sources for this claim, nor point at the specific commercial events that mark this claimed beginning. Perhaps the authors refer to the application on ships of the technology of the magnetic compass? Or perhaps simply to the increase in trade between the Islamic and Chinese Empires of the 9th century? Borghesi and Vercelli go on to highlight the recent rapid acceleration of the process of globalisation due to new Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Van Veen-Groot and Nijkamp (1999) characterise globalisation as "at present a 'vogue' word that refers to opening up and increasing internationalisation of markets, worldwide communication and mobility, changing consumption patterns and lifestyles, key positions of multinational firms in world markets, and shifting of industrial activities all over the world." It is clear that the overall trend in globalisation is an increase in trade and transport, both domestically and worldwide.

Globalisation, as its name suggests, is indeed a global phenomenon. Unrestricted to any particular countries, globalisation is an issue that bears on everyone without them taking any specific action. Globalisation is like the environment in this respect. Countries may elect isolationist foreign policy, but they do so to their economic detriment. Speaking specifically of Australia, Worthington (2001) notes that, "in assessing the economic prudence of invoking the national interest to block foreign takeovers, governments must consider the possibility that such a decision would endanger the advantages, such as employment, that flow from foreign investment." He goes on to caution "a reputation for restricting international flows of capital may discourage further investment in Australia."

In his book Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis, Deon Geldenhuys (1990) claims that economic isolation is coincidental with ostracism in diplomatic, military and socio-cultural arenas. Essentially countries can opt out of the commercial aspect of globalisation, but they do so to their detriment, being left behind while the rest of the world advances.

The culmination of globalisation for those on the forefront of the expedition of the Modern Project, the Modern Project being better living through science and technology, has been the realisation of that which was only dreamed of but decades ago. That is, the commoditisation of high technology: handheld computers; flat screen colour monitors; compact discs; microwave ovens; mobile telephones; 3D simulations; access to global telecommunication networks; GPS navigation; electronic money; flight; medicine; genetically modified food stuffs; enormous databases; sophisticated software; and so forth. This is The Future. The Future has been a dream, a dream of being free from manual toil, and though far from over, in the large, it's been realised. It came, however, with a problem, and a twist.

The central problem of globalisation that humanity faces presently is that The Future has not been realised equally for all members of the globe, and that humanity may not in fact be able to pay the price, in energy, that it costs to sustain, let alone expand. It's not that we don't have the energy -- we do. It's that we don't yet have viable technology to that allows us to utilise this energy without considerable negative, and potentially irreversible, consequences to the environment.

The twist is that as globalisation has unfolded the philosophical foundation for Modernism, the general philosophy underlying the Modern Project itself, has undone itself, or at the very least discovered its limits, and given rise to the quandary that is postmodernism. While the postmodern condition presented itself in the arts early in the twentieth century as an affront to the dogma of authority, this author would argue that the true undoing of modernity did not occur until the scientists, engineers, mathematicians and philosophers of the 20th century discovered the limits of reason itself. We speak here of Godel's incompleteness theorem and Turing's halting problem (Hawking 2005); of quantum electro dynamics, and the butterfly effect.

The conceptual institutions of modernity, such as the scientific method and economic rationalism, are the formal systems that facilitated the increases in technology and trade that have accelerated the process of globalisation. There is irony here, as the problem of the environment that occurs in this globalised world now seeks a solution in a context where the tenets of modernity are coming widely into doubt. Where modernity had sought certainty, the only certainty it found was that it would find none. A culture that has been so sure on its path to discovery, is now in the throes of learning how to cope with uncertainty. This is the philosophical and cultural twist that accompanies the problem of the environment in our imminent and globalised future.

Technological progress has meant that the tedium and burden of material production is increasingly not applicable to great swathes of the populace. The nature of 'production' in sophisticated economies has changed from being the result of the labour of the body, to the labour of the mind. Sophisticated markets can reward a person with great wealth for the timely and brief application of their fingers to a keyboard, and more and more people have access to this reality. The ethereal nature of production in such societies has given rise to an emphasis on consumerism. Consumption being the flip side of production, production being necessary for growth, and growth being necessary for the social tenability of the capitalist model of resource distribution in a free society where individuals have a level of social mobility as "merited" by "the market". Consumerism could also be seen as a resignation to the emptiness and futility of the postmodern condition.

While technology has permeated contemporary societies and thus modified the nature of commerce, crime, education, communication, entertainment, power, and so on, from their prior conceptions in ways that are interesting to dissect, the truly pressing issue that has resulted from this technological progress is as it applies to the environment. This is especially the case given that technological advancement has not applied evenly across the now heavily connected globe, and as large nations such as China and India seek to enjoy the benefits of technological advancement that their friends in the West have, and even as the West continues to enjoy the benefits of technology, the toll on the environment is forecast to be severe.

In conclusion, globalisation is a connectedness that is the result of technological and cultural advancement. Globalisation began by degrees as technological progress in transport and information technology allowed. Globalisation, like human progress, is a function of technology; it is the reality that has emerged from the process of human civilisation; and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is much that is good about globalisation, and it has a lot to offer. Globalisation embodies change, and as things change there is much of interest to speculate about and discuss. The trouble is that we're burning too much dirty fuel too fast to make it all happen, and we suspect this isn't sustainable. This environmental issue is worthy of the most attention, as if we can solve the environment problem, then other social ailments ought heal themselves, for as Benjamin Disraeli said: "Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilisers of man."

Reference List

Globalisation: Perceptions and Threats to National Government in Australia Glenn Worthington Politics and Public Administration Group 26 June 2001

[http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5687 The Three Rounds of Globalization Ashutosh Sheshabalaya] The Globalist October 19, 2006

Together we can move beyond racial wounds Barack Obama Sydney Morning Herald March 20, 2008

Sustainable globalisation Simone Borghesi, Alessandro Vercelli Department of Political Economy, University of Siena, Piazza S.Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy Received 7 December 2001; received in revised form 31 July 2002; accepted 19 September 2002

Globalisation and sustainability: environmental Kuznets curve and the WTO Clem Tisdell Department of Economics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia Received 21 September 2000; received in revised form 30 July 2001; accepted 1 August 2001

Globalisation, transport and the environment: new perspectives for ecological economics Danielle B. van Veen-Groot, Peter Nijkamp Free University of Amsterdam, Department of Spatial Economics, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands Received 2 September 1998; received in revised form 15 April 1999; accepted 22 July 1999

Additional references:

Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis Deon Geldenhuys Published 1990, Cambridge University Press ISBN:0521402689

The Postmodern Grand Narrative ABC National Radio, broadcast 10 October 1999.

God Created The Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History Edited, with commentary, by Stephen Hawking Published 2005, Running Press

What did the Left want to achieve that has been achieved?

Notes:

100-150 years ago the working man (i.e. more than half the population) got little pay for long 6-7 day long working week with long working days.
Karl Marx 150 years ago, revolution: one tyranny replaced by anohter.
Mark Latham, From the Suburbs: Aspirational Australia
- Working man has become more affluent and consequently become more assperational. I.e. working man now wants to be a capitalist! (i.e. own private property)

The left agenda:

Humane working hours and conditions.
- 8 work, 8 recreational, 8 sleep.
- Improve working conditions (OHS, etc.)
Social security
- Old age pension (unfunded)
- Superannuation (funded)
- Public housing
- Unemployment benefits
  - The dole was dreamt up in the depression
- Sickness/disabililty benefits.
- Family allowance, child endownment.
Universal suffrage (voting rights)
Equal pay among sexes
Universal health care (nationalise healthcare if necessary)
Nationalise banks (Aus 1949, 47?; Ben Chiefly defeated by High Court).
- Only treating a symptom.
- Problem was lack of control of production, distribution and exchange.
- With that control comes a more equitable society.
- Banks can be regulated w/o state ownership.
- Being private banks can seek to make a profit, manipulate market share, etc.
Broad public access to education (i.e. public schools, unis)
- To give individuals access to professions (rather than by heredity)
- Commonwealth Scholarships
- Affirmative Action
Regulation of business
Taxation
- Income tax (tax is de facto nationalism a la Marx)
  - Income tax started by England to fund Crimean war. Thripence in the pound.
  - Crimean war: 1870s, Britain vs. Russia?
- Taxation of business (company tax)

Thoughts:

Have the Left and Right formed a new overclass?
Is there a new and unrepresented underclass?

On Globalisation and the Environment (Final)

This essay introduces issues of globalisation and the environment. It suggests the development of globalisation is a positive occurrence -- that globalisation counts as progress. The essay urges the reader to consider the problem of managing the quality and habitability of the global environment in this context.

Coinciding with the commoditisation of the television in developed communities has been the idea of The Future. This idea of The Future has been continuously beamed out to the collective consciousness of technologically advanced communities over all forms of cultural media for decades. The Future: as depicted in television shows like "Beyond 2000"; as promised by popular journals such as "Scientific American"; as speculated by films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey"; as depicted by anime such as "Ghost in the Shell", or cartoons like "Futurama"; and as simulated by video games.

The Future, now, is more than an idea: it's a reality, for some. Communities for which The Future has become reality are still learning to adjust. This idea of The Future is, in essence, the reality of globalisation: it's a "connectedness" between historically disparate parties in trade and culture that has arisen from an empowerment afforded by the state of the art in transportation and information technology.

Globalisation has been growing by degrees since the beginning of human civilisation. As claimed in The Globalist (Sheshabalaya 2006), "we would do well to understand, once and for all, that globalisation is not a new thing. It has been with us since the dawn of history." Sheshabalaya isolates three rounds of globalisation, being: the exchange of ideas among ancient empires; a period of inequity during the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West; and third a return to equity with the growth of China and India.

Sheshabalaya notes, "the early 19th century was a time of global equity. There may have been significant poverty inside nations -- but there was much less between them." He attributes to the rise of the British Empire the loss of global equity during the second round, marking the beginning of his third round with the end of World War II. Thereafter "the rise of China and India," and now "a return towards global equity."

While presenting empirical evidence for "a worldwide increase in environmental degradation and economic inequality," Borghesi and Vercelli (2003) take a view of globalisation through the lens of commerce. They state that the economic aspect of globalisation, the integration of world markets, was under way as early as the 9th century. The 9th century saw the first use of the magnetic compass on ships, and an increase in trade between the Islamic and Chinese Empires of the time. The authors go on to highlight the recent rapid acceleration of the process of globalisation due to new information and communication technology.

Van Veen-Groot and Nijkamp (1999) characterise globalisation as "at present a 'vogue' word that refers to opening up and increasing internationalisation of markets, worldwide communication and mobility, changing consumption patterns and lifestyles, key positions of multinational firms in world markets, and shifting of industrial activities all over the world." It can be seen that the overall trend in globalisation is an increase in trade and transport.

Globalisation is indeed a global phenomenon. Unrestricted to any particular countries, globalisation is an issue that bears on everyone. Countries may elect isolationist foreign policy, but they do so to their detriment. Worthington (2001) notes that, "in assessing the economic prudence of invoking the national interest to block foreign takeovers, governments must consider the possibility that such a decision would endanger the advantages, such as employment, that flow from foreign investment." He goes on to caution "a reputation for restricting international flows of capital may discourage further investment…"

Geldenhuys suggests economic isolation is correlated with ostracism in diplomatic, military and socio-cultural arenas (Geldenhuys 1990). Essentially countries can opt out of the commercial aspect of globalisation, but they face being left behind.

A problem of globalisation that humanity faces presently is that The Future has not yet been realised equally for all members of the globe, and that humanity may not be able to pay the price, in energy, that it costs to sustain or expand. Mankind does not yet have viable technology that allows us to utilise energy without considerable negative consequences.

Technological progress has meant that the tedium and burden of material production is increasingly not applicable to great swathes of the populace. The nature of production in sophisticated economies has changed from being the result of the labour of the body, to the labour of the mind. Sophisticated markets can reward a person with great wealth for the timely and brief application of their fingers to a keyboard, and more and more people have access to this reality.

The ethereal nature of production in such societies has given rise to an emphasis on consumerism. Consumption being the flip side of production, production being necessary for growth, and growth being necessary for the social tenability of the capitalist model of resource distribution in a free society where individuals have a level of social mobility as "merited" by "the market".

In conclusion, globalisation is a connectedness that is the result of technological and cultural advancement. Globalisation began by degrees as technological progress in transport and information technology allowed. Globalisation, like human progress, is a function of technology; it is the reality that has emerged from the process of human civilisation; and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There is much that is good about globalisation, and it has a lot to offer.

Globalisation embodies change, and as things change there is much of interest to speculate about and discuss. The trouble is that we're burning too much dirty fuel too fast to make it all happen, and we suspect this isn't sustainable. This environmental issue is worthy of the most attention, as if we can solve the environment problem, then other social ailments ought heal themselves, for as Benjamin Disraeli said: "Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilisers of man."

Reference List

Globalisation: Perceptions and Threats to National Government in Australia Glenn Worthington Politics and Public Administration Group 26 June 2001 http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/2000-01/01RP27.htm

The Three Rounds of Globalization Ashutosh Sheshabalaya The Globalist October 19, 2006 http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5687

Together we can move beyond racial wounds Barack Obama Sydney Morning Herald March 20, 2008

Sustainable globalization Simone Borghesi, Alessandro Vercelli Department of Political Economy, University of Siena, Piazza S.Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy Received 7 December 2001; received in revised form 31 July 2002; accepted 19 September 2002

Globalisation and sustainability: environmental Kuznets curve and the WTO Clem Tisdell Department of Economics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia Received 21 September 2000; received in revised form 30 July 2001; accepted 1 August 2001

Globalisation, transport and the environment: new perspectives for ecological economics Danielle B. van Veen-Groot, Peter Nijkamp Free University of Amsterdam, Department of Spatial Economics, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands Received 2 September 1998; received in revised form 15 April 1999; accepted 22 July 1999

Additional references

Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis Deon Geldenhuys Published 1990, Cambridge University Press ISBN:0521402689

The Postmodern Grand Narrative ABC National Radio, broadcast 10 October 1999.

God Created The Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History Edited, with commentary, by Stephen Hawking Published 2005, Running Press

On Globalisation and the Environment (Short)