THE CHIPS ARE DOWN- WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR A WORLD RIVEN BY MONEY?

摘要

It's A clumsy word that might better have been left in the dry pages of a World Bank report. Even worse, it can mean totally different things. But we're stuck with "globalisation". It does not begin to do justice to the richness and complexity of the changes that are happening as the world grows more interdependent and more connected, but around this one word has developed the first great debate of the 21st century. It is a debate that keeps world leaders locked up in their luxury conference suites with the windows closed, afraid that the breeze will bring them the roars of protesters and the smell of the tear gas. And if Bill Clinton is right, the effects of globalisation were brought home to New York, too, when the towers of the World Trade Center became the target for terrorist hatred. Globalisation is the result of unprecedented scientific and technological advances. Microchips, jet planes, satellites and optical fibres are among the key inventions that have made a fast-moving, interlinked world possible. Over the past decade the costs of computing, telecommunications and transport have plummeted. Combining these technological changes with the opening of markets to the free passage of goods and finance has led to a huge boom in world trade, rapid economic growth with all its fearsome consequences for the environment, high-speed global financial markets and the dominance of a Western culture based on consumerism and individualism.