1.11: Discussion

1: Globalization - Overhyped or Underestimated?

People routinely make sweeping claims about globalization: “Borders do not matter anymore.” “The world is becoming one culture.” “Globalization benefits everyone.” “Globalization is ending.” “Technology has made geography irrelevant.”

Choose one of these claims. Your job is not simply to agree or disagree. Instead, decide:

What part of the statement is true? What part is misleading?

Use at least two ideas from Chapter 1 to complicate the claim. Then create a better one-sentence version of the statement.

For example, instead of simply saying “Borders no longer matter,” you might conclude that borders matter differently depending on what or who is trying to cross them.

Peer response: Find one classmate whose revised claim differs from yours. Identify one situation where their interpretation works better than yours.

2: Who Gets a Seat at the Global Table?

Imagine that a new international body has been created to make decisions about global artificial intelligence governance. There are only ten seats at the table. Who should get them? You might consider:

• governments
• technology companies
• scientists
• workers
• students
• civil-society organizations
• Indigenous communities
• countries from the Global South
• environmental experts
• artists
• educators
• people whose data trains AI systems
• or groups of your own choosing

Choose the ten voices you think should be represented and explain your reasoning. Then answer the harder question: Who did you leave out, and what could go wrong because they are missing?

Finally, connect your answer to Chapter 1's discussion of global governance and the question: Who gets to write the rules?

3: Can You Be Global Without Becoming the Same?

Consider something cultural that has traveled across borders: a food, fashion trend, television format, sport, religious practice, dance, musical genre, beauty standard, meme, holiday tradition, or another example. Do not simply describe where it came from. Instead, consider what happened to it after it traveled. Did people preserve it? Modify it?Commercialize it? Mix it with something else? Argue about its authenticity? Reject it? Claim it as their own?

Then answer: Does globalization make cultures more alike, or does it sometimes create more cultural variation? Your response should use glocalization or cultural hybridization, but your example should be different from those used in the chapter.

Peer response: Find someone whose example points toward the opposite conclusion from yours and explain whether the two cases can both be true.