World Wide Events

Fifty years ago, the thought of watching a former head of state being hanged, would have been unimaginable. This revolution has been brought about the advances in technology, such as television, the ordinary telephone and the Internet. With the strides made in technology such as You Tube, which allows people to share video clips on the Internet and formats such as MP3, through which music can be shared, the exchange of information is now faster than ever before. Scholars have succumbed to the temptation of describing the world as a global village. With the progress of technology, the death of distance aided by the Internet and the accompanying disappearance of political borders, the world today has been declared by one marked by the end of the nation state. The most frequently cited example to substantiate this claim has been the growing interdependence and the emergence of a global culture most prominently exemplified by the visible and global chain of MacDonalds. Events in a particular place have the ability to impact another which is geographically distant. For example, the Asian financial crash of 1998 had reverberations around the globe. The description, however, is misleading. The term village is used to refer to a group of houses, in a self contained district, with a common culture. More importantly, it implies shared values, stability and interdependence. Supporters of the term global village draw upon examples such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the global appreciation of Hollywood as political and cultural dimensions of this purported village. The WTO, since it succeeded the GATT (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade) has deepened the integration of states by pushing forth the agenda of liberalization by lowering national tariff plans. It presently enjoys the membership of roughly hundred and fifty states, committed to the WTO agenda of promoting a world with trade rules between them. Hollywood too, enjoys an almost universal audience, which few movie industries can boast of.