Q Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is for you to critically think about different terms and concepts from each week and to engage in discussion with your peers on an online platform. Knowledge: This assignment is designed to provide for you a better "real world" understanding of the terms, concepts, and theories you will learn about each week. The discussion boards give you space to connect specific terms, concepts, and theories to your experience of the world and engage with others on an online platform. Task: To successfully complete this assignment, you will: 1. Follow the prompt that will be given by Monday of each new week. 2. Respond to the prompt using specific examples from the text, lecture, films, etc. Your responses need to be thought-out and detailed. An ideal response will be 10-15 sentences long. 3. RESPOND to another classmate's post for that week. Your response should also be well thought-out and detailed, a minimum of four sentences long. Replying with comments like "I agree with u," or "thanks for sharing" will not be accepted. 4. Complete both your original post and reply to student by Thursday at Midnight. Criteria for Success: You will be graded using the following criteria: 1. Posts are on time. 2. Your original post is detailed and is using specific examples from the course content, and is a minimum of 10 sentences in length. 3. You provide a detailed reply to another classmate's post. A quality comment that engages the other person and furthers the discussion is required. Background The effort of human striving has brought us to this moment. I am sitting here on an early Monday morning, sipping tea, and thinking about the effects of globalization on our world. For some of you, that might sound like the most boring thing for someone to reflect on so early in the week, so early in the morning, but globalization is what has brought us to this moment; remote from one another, scattered across the globe, but still brought together by the common purpose of learning how to better communicate with people from all over the world, from all walks of life, with vastly different worldviews. Globalization, like so many other concepts and ideas we have studied this quarter, is complex in its nature and has made the world simultaneously more complex and convenient. Before we get much further, let’s talk about what globalization is. What is Globalization? At its most basic, globalization “…describes the conditions of a globally networked society deeply penetrated by the expansion of global capitalism, information technologies, and cultural interconnection” (Sorrells & Sekimoto, 2016, p. xvi). Okay, Rach, you might ask, what does that mean? It means that through the advancement of mechanical and informational technologies, our world has become more connected than it ever has been before. Since the migration of the first humans from Africa, we have been a species curious of the world around us. As we spread out across the globe, our curiosity, wanderlust, and greed have pushed us to explore and make connections with one another. Globalization has been responsible for some of the most amazing advancements in human history, but it has also been the scene of the brutality of colonization, slavery, and cultural oppression and erasure. There are several ways that globalization has been examined. For Thomas Friedman (2005), he is concerned with the economic and production implications of globalization. When he makes the argument that the world is flat he is saying that excluding labor, the playing field for commerce has been leveled by our global interconnectedness. Stuart Hall looks at the “cultural ruptures” that are caused by the interconnectedness of globalization (Morley & Chen, 1996). Cultural ruptures occur when different cultures come into contact with one another and create tensions caused by different worldviews. These are not necessarily bad, but they are places where the status quo of a culture is called into question. Arjun Appadurai (1996) explains globalization by imagining it as having influence over different global “landscapes.” Appadurai’s (1996) “-scapes” are comprised of ethnoscapes, technoscapes, ideoscapes, mediascapes, and financescapes. Appadurai describes each of these ideas as different landscapes that each of us are positioned on. For example, our understanding and interaction with technology is predicated on our culture’s adoption and use of different technologies. For example, our relationship with technology here in the United States is very different than it is for people in say, Myanmar. Finally, we can also look at globalization through the lens of communication. ?oproni (2011) stated that the “…globalization of communication implies the freedom of movement of ideas, information, images, and persons who spread ideas and information” (p. 6). Each of the above scholars have chosen to focus on one aspect of the leviathan that is globalization. Friedman (2005) is interested in commerce. Hall (1996) is interested in how globalization ruptures our understanding of the world and culture-at-large. Appadurai (1996) is interested in how the global flows of people are terraforming our world into different –scapes. ?oproni (2011) is specifically focused on the effect of globalization on communication. But here’s the thing: all of these concepts and ideas are interconnected. We cannot fully understand one, without coming to understand the others. We cannot examine the effects of globalization on communication without also examining the technoscapes, ideoscapes, and mediascapes. We cannot examine financescapes without understanding the globalization of commerce and consumption. We cannot examine the impacts of culture and their rupture points without understanding how difference was presented and communicated. It’s a big topic, and it can feel a little overwhelming—which I guess is the reason why academic scholars tend to focus on one part of it. An aspect of globalization that has always been of interest to me is the use of mechanical and informational technologies to create connections across the globe. Mechanical technologies include advancements in things like transportation and medicine. Informational technologies include the transmission of content and ideas across the globe through media like the Internet. It should not be understated that advancements in both of these technological categories have fundamentally changed how we move about the world and how we communicate with one another. For example, just over a century ago, a trip from England to the United States would take over three weeks. Today, you can go from New York City to London, England in approximately five hours on the Concorde jet. With enough resources, you can literally get to any point on the globe within 24 hours. A little over 150 years ago, the average American never traveled more that 50 miles from their house in their entire lifetime. In addition, advancements in things like medicine have also fundamentally changed how we live. My wife’s great grandfather died of an infected tick bite less than 100 years ago. Today, we are facing a global pandemic, and in less than a year, no less than three laboratories have already created highly effective vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 that will be distributed over the next year. The advancement of mechanical technologies have fundamentally changed the global flows of people. As I have mentioned more times than necessary at this point, my background is in Critical Intercultural Communication and New Communication Technologies. I am specifically interested in the informational technologies part of globalization and how that affects culture. This means that a lot of my focus is on evolution of informational technologies and how they affect our worldview and our communication. The invention of the Internet was a quantum leap forward in our ability to connect to one another. Each major communication technology advancement has seen a leap in human evolution and our connectivity to one another. When the Gutenberg printing press was invented in the 15th century, we saw the very beginning of mass media. The invention of the telegraph allowed for rapid communication across vast expanses. The Internet…well the Internet brought the entire world and the history of human knowledge to our fingertips (and yet is mostly used to look at pictures of cats). The impact this has had on our understanding of the world, our cultures, and ourselves should never be understated. It’s like the last regular week of school, Rach, couldn’t you have just given us a movie to watch rather than learning about globalization? I could have, but I honestly think that beginning to understand globalization is important. Your reading this right now is a product of globalization. I think I have met maybe two of you in person (you know who you are). The rest of you, we have never met, except through our screens. How strange and wonderful is that? You have seen my face, you have heard my voice, we have shared information about ourselves with one another, and we have managed to do that travelling through both space and time. I am connecting with you from Federal Way, WA in November of 2020. Some of you will read this immediately, others—especially since I will reuse this prompt for future quarters—will be reading this months or even years in the future. It’s not just about this class at this moment. We connect and learn so much about the world around us because of the effects of technology on communication. From watching early morning soccer (football) matches of Real Madrid to downloading the newest BTS album and everything in-between, we are more connected than ever before. And each one of these experiences, each one of these connections fundamentally changes how we see the world around us and how we interact with one another. Prompt For the last discussion board of the quarter, I would like you to explore the effects informational technologies have had on how you connect to the world at large. I would like you to examine this from two different perspectives: the personal and the professional/academic. In regards to the effect of informational technologies on your personal life, I would like you to talk about a connection you have to someone that you would not necessarily be able to have without the Internet and/or digital technologies. For your professional/academic life, please describe how informational technologies have affected your work and/or school life. Technology has become so ingrained into our lives that we often don’t realize how exceptional the ease with which we connect actually is. For example, when I look at how my personal life has been affected by informational technologies, I can see it in how I connect with the people I am closest to. I am the only one of my family and close friends that lives in Washington State. Most of my family and friends are still down in California, although I do have both categories of people spread across the world. Because of informational technologies like Zoom and Messenger, I am able to see and talk to people who are hundreds of miles away on a regular basis. Rather than just calling my mother to make sure she is okay during this damn pandemic, I can Zoom with her, so she can see me and I can see her. I have used various IM platforms, from AIM to G-Chat to Text to Messenger, to talk to by best friend from college almost every day for the last 20 years. As these technologies have evolved, it has become easier to simulate actual presence with one another. As someone who is a profound introvert, the ability to use my devices as portal to interaction has been invaluable. It’s obviously not just my personal life that has been affected by informational technologies. Even before we moved to being exclusively online for part of last year and this year, I still incorporated a ton of technology into my classes. Our move to online only has shown how many other ways we can use technology to connect. My entire job, my ability to connect to you, is dependent right now on technology. I am as reliant on my trusty MacBook Air and internet connection to teach you as I am on the knowledge I collected during the 13 years I spent in college. Canvas, Zoom, Outlook Email, Prezi, Google Slides, Kahoot, Netflix, Amazon—all of these are ways for me to create connections with you from a safe distance. Even when I eventually return to the physical classroom, I will still use all of these—and more—to continue to create learning environments and connections with all my future students. For the discussion, please post the following: 1. An example of how you have used informational technologies to connect with someone you would not be able to otherwise. 2. Talk about some aspect of your job/career/schooling that is only possible because of informational technologies, like the Internet or mobile technologies. 3. Discuss how you see these above mentioned technologies affect your understanding of the world and your own cultural identities. 4. Both your initial post and reply are due by Thursday.