ShmoopTube

00:03

Technological advances have been around as long as people have. [Person rubbing hands by a campfire]

00:07

Starting fires? That's technology. Making tools? Also technology. Launching a Trojan

00:13

rabbit from atop a castle? Yep, that's technology, too. Nowadays, we tend to think

00:18

of technology in terms of laptops and iPhones on the internet. Not only can we [Man using an apple PC]

00:22

use these items to brush up on the many verbal bloopers of former President

00:25

George Bush, but we can also read the news, take a class on pretty much any

00:29

topic you could think of-- we're looking at you, underwater basket weaving-- [A girl holding a basket underwater with a PC screen]

00:33

and talk to people on the other side of the world. Pretty amazing, right? Well, the

00:37

technological advances we adore aren't all rainbows and unicorns, however. One of

00:42

the issues that arose as more and more people have embraced new technologies is [A man stood with his arms on his hips beside a pinata]

00:46

the reduction in cultural diversity resulting in cultural dislocation,

00:51

meaning that people have become separated from their own culture, even

00:55

when sitting in their own home in the country where they were born. Well, [Man taking a picture of the Mexico flag]

00:58

technologies like the internet breed globalization, or worldwide economic and

01:02

cultural interconnectedness. This term, however, is a bit of a misnomer. The

01:06

American culture is imbibed by billions of people all over the planet, but [A man holding a can of Pepsi]

01:11

Americans don't do a whole lot of cultural imbibing on our own. This is why

01:15

critics of globalization argue that globalization is really just a cover-up [Hand picks up Earth and USA flag appears]

01:19

for Americanization. After all, aren't most of the companies spreading the

01:23

technological love American? Well, clearly that little blue bird on the Twitter [Hand draws a mustache on a twitter logo]

01:27

logo needs a villainously twirly handlebar mustache. But the truth is

01:31

that American companies aren't the only ones who provide consumers around the

01:34

world with highly desirable products. In East Asia, for example, the viewing public [Woman driving a car]

01:38

in countries like Taiwan is enthralled by television dramas exported from South

01:43

Korea. Also, pop culture and handbags aren't the only things people consume in

01:47

our globalized world. Economic systems, political systems, and values get [A girl walks into a coffee shop with a gift]

01:51

distributed too. And while we could certainly argue that the spread of democracy

01:54

makes the world a better place, many people just aren't comfortable with the

01:58

idea of their culture floundering under the weight of America's. As a result, some

02:03

countries do their utmost to lessen the influence that globalization has on [People in a meeting room]

02:08

their culture. Bhutan, for example, has a national dress code. China has the Great

02:12

Firewall, which may be less about fighting American

02:15

cultural imperialism and more about keeping the Chinese populace from [Man watching President Bush give a speech and error message appears]

02:18

getting access to certain kinds of information... And then there's North Korea.

02:21

If countries were people, North Korea would be the crazy hermit living off in

02:26

a cage somewhere. Again, how much of what North Korea does is about cultural [A man in a cave with a campfire and a rocket]

02:30

preservation and how much is about maintaining an authoritarian

02:33

dictatorship that's still stuck in the Cold War? It's the circle of life, people.

02:37

An advance in technology affects how we live, how we live inspires in advance in [A man walks away from a payphone]

02:42

technology, and well, so on and so on. Of course, the circle may be broken once the

02:47

tech gets so good that robots can do everything humans can. Hmm didn't they make

02:51

a movie about that? [Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing black sunglasses]

Full Transcript