On the future of globalization

20070613
(answer to the question "What is the future of globalization?")

We have come to the point time and space cannot be shrunk any more significantly. Our instant societies allow people to seize opportunities at the other end of the planet in a blink. Reaching the cutting edge requires tools that are now almost commoditized. Differenciation becomes difficult.

To me, the financial system is on the verge of a turning point, things will have to change. A consensus on the diagnostic should emerge as surely as it did on our environment. I'm not sure transitions will be smooth. Globalization demands a global approach, a comprehensive approach. People fear for their identities, their culture, their independence, but they also feel things have to change.

Alter-globalization is not very mature nowadays, mostly reactionary or conservative in a sense it proposes XIXth century alternatives, as radical as the ones it condemns.