Changing World Conditions
Focus #1
How have changing world conditions promoted internationalism?
Key Terms: responsibility to protect, common human heritage, trickle-down effect
How have changing world conditions promoted internationalism?
Key Terms: responsibility to protect, common human heritage, trickle-down effect
A century ago, Canada was a rural country. Computers had not yet been invented, and the world wars - and the destruction they created - had not yet occurred. Since then, Canada and most other nation-states have gone through the growing pains of becoming part of a world community. Globalization has changed the ways Canadians communicate, travel, engage in politics, do business, socialize, and experience other cultures.
As the world becomes more globalized, the challenges that affect one country can spread far and wide. In November 2002, for example, a farmer in China died of a disease, but no one knew what it was. Three months later, an American travelling to Singapore from China died of the same illness. Then several people who treated him go sick. Because of air travel, the disease was spreading undetected around the world. By July 2003, this highly contagious disease had a name: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. It had infected people in 26 countries, including Canada.
Terrorism and climate change are two other challenges that the international community faces. Global challenges like these require global efforts to resolve. Multilateral, internationalist solutions are often the only way to solve large-scale challenges.
As the world becomes more globalized, the challenges that affect one country can spread far and wide. In November 2002, for example, a farmer in China died of a disease, but no one knew what it was. Three months later, an American travelling to Singapore from China died of the same illness. Then several people who treated him go sick. Because of air travel, the disease was spreading undetected around the world. By July 2003, this highly contagious disease had a name: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. It had infected people in 26 countries, including Canada.
Terrorism and climate change are two other challenges that the international community faces. Global challenges like these require global efforts to resolve. Multilateral, internationalist solutions are often the only way to solve large-scale challenges.
Global Communication
the Global Village
- Do electronic communications like the Internet promote internationalism or do they cause people to become isolated from their own communities? Or do they do both?
- How does the ability to communicate with people all over the world affect the ability to communicate with people in a local community?
- What is the difference between communicating electronically and socializing in person?
Bridges or Barriers?
Tim Berners-Lee, developer of the World Wide Web, 2007
We've expanded to the point where all the world will be connected - we're going to have to get on with each other.
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Marshall van Alstyne & Erik Brynjolfsson
Because the Internet makes it easier to find like-minded individuals, it can [create] and strengthen fringe communities that have a common ideology but are [scattered] geographically.
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