Maps of Globalization

Princeton's searchable collection of historical maps and present-day analysis, including Artists' Travels in the Renaissance, an 1891 ethnographic chart, Telegraph Lines in 1869, Global Terrorism c. 1983, Oil reserves vs. consumption, a visualization of world development since 1960.

Globalization as Westernization

My position:
Previously the world was dominated by a geographic, state based system. Globalization is driving the world to a market based, corporate based system. Early in the formation of the state based system there was little incentive for concern about the rights and lives of individuals in the pursuit of political and geographic power. The same is true now in the global economy; there is little concern about the rights and lives of individuals in the pursuit of economic success. Perhaps the corporation in some form may become the dominant form of organization in the modern world.

A user in Second Life has created a virtual ecosystem within the game!

While taking a break from the UK game industry to raise her child, a programmer created a self-contained ecology on a Second Life island, with numerous species and natural phenomenon that must work together to keep the system function: clouds rain on the land, nourishing the plants (which also respond to sunlight), bees spread pollen to help the plants reproduce, birds eat seeds to keep the plants from growing out of control, and so on.

Virtual Tour Operator

Synthtravels is a tour operator that arranges for guided visits to virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life, providing "native guides" for people who want to get the lay of the land. Synthravels is the first organization to offer a complete guide service to all the people who want to make a tour in virtual worlds without knowing these new realities, even if they have never put their feet in these strange, synthetic grounds. The tours and the destinations are chosen by the staff of Synthravels, composed by programmers, architects, experienced video gamers.

The West and the Rest

Culture is our biggest most general term for everything there is.

It is an artifact, a framework which varies from culture to culture.

What constitutes culture?

The way people reason and even perceive can vary across cultures. The whole way of organizing reality can vary from culture to culture.

The perceived fundamental rights of people vary across cultures.

What is normal varies from culture to culture.

Causes and origins are seen as different from culture to culture. Are they under human control, human influence, divine control, etc.

If society were structured based on the mother-child relationship, rather than the concept of the independent male, what would the resulting society look like? Would men feel inherently discriminated against because they were less essential to the mother child relationship than women, just as women feel inherently discriminated against in a male oriented society because of their lack of choice in the mother-child relationship?

Western assumptions: the male is the norm, and nature is there to be exploited.

Second Life Documentary

Filmmaker, television producer, and multimedia artist Douglas Gayeton shot and produced this made-for-TV series online within Second Life:

In January 2007, a man named Molotov Alva disappeared from his California home. Recently, a series of seven video dispatches by a Traveler of the same name have appeared inside Second Life. In these dispatches Molotov Alva encounters everything from Furries to Cyberpunks to Neo-Luddites to Sex Slaves to the King of the Hobos, Orhalla Zander, who becomes Molotov's guide as he searches for the creator of their brave new world.Video link to the first episode. Link to documentary project home page, and more on Molotov's "first" life here.

It turns out that HBO has bought the rights from the creator (Second Life users retain the underlying intellectual property rights to content they create in-world).