chapter 22

• Technology: The Acceleration of Innovation

  • Generating Energy: Fossil Fuel Breakthroughs
  • Harnessing Energy: Transportation breakthroughs
  • Harnessing Energy: Communication and Information Breakthroughs
  • Harnessing Energy: Military Breakthroughs
• Locations where technological breakthrough appeared

  • U.S.
  • Western Europe
  • Japan
• University research


  Created a foundation for tech applications
• Government actions


  Created military/weaponry advancements
• Corporations' actions


  Met consumer demands and products seeking profit
• Links across the world deepened and new advancements spread faster


  More major industrial enterprises grew out of places like China and India
• The age of fossil fuels marked the twentieth century and set it apart from the industrial age
• Electricity was made available to everyone through the use of oil and coal, skyrocketing the modern economy
• Electrification allowed for the accessibility of electricity that spread across all countries
• Gasoline innovation led to a decline in the use of horses, transformed daily life, and contributed to climate change
• Henry Ford's Model T initiated democracy in cars and transformed transportation
• The communication revolution started with the telegraph and phone, spreading information rapidly
• The radio allowed mass success of propaganda and spread national and international news
• Television provided entertainment and information but raised concerns about cultural corruption and portrayal of minorities
• Personal Computers provided virtually unlimited access to information and transformed industries and commerce
• Computers


  • Virtually unlimited access to information
  • Anyone can creatively impact the technological revolutions
  • Schools have been transformed
  • Central skill for any business or occupation
  • New industries and commerce (e.g., mobile banking, retail like Amazon, Walmart)
  • Online social lives (e.g., dating apps, gaming, social media friends)
• Being social online has caused criticism and anxiety and hinders real-world relationships
• The complexity of the virtual world is vulnerable to outages, sabotages, possible warfare, and natural disaster
• Technologies of destruction


  • Progress in military technology and arms created and used during the latest centuries, including tanks, aircraft, missiles, nuclear weapons, and the internet. Shows the shift in power of destruction and the more devastating effects of war compared to pre-industrialization
• The Global Economy: The Acceleration of Entanglement
• Globalization of Industrialization


  Development in the Global South
• Re-Globalization


  Deepening Economic Connections
• Economic Globalization


  Speed of technological innovation redefined the world's economy, focusing on the decades following the Second World War up to the present. Includes industrialization of post-colonial nations and the Global South
• After decolonization, economic stability was a top priority to legitimize governments on the global stage
• Colonists laid a broken foundation for rising nations
• Countries struggled to find a strategy for economic growth (exports, private ownership, state-run economics?)
• Asian Tigers like South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore experienced large economic growth due to exports, becoming recently industrialized countries. China became the second largest economy to the U.S., and India followed a similar path with new technological industries
• Demand for oil boosted many oil-producing economies/countries
• In most of Africa and the Arabian world, there was little to no economic growth, leading to lower income and living standards
• Africa Rising: Economic return of growth, a middle class, and spending/investment money in Africa
• "Re-globalization" refers to new global economic relationships formed by countries during the second half of the 20th century due to wars and depression destroying the original globalization
• The Bretton Woods System was set up by capitalist winners of WWII to prevent a repeat of the depression that followed WWI, creating economic rules for dealings among capitalists, allowing for free trade, stable currency values, and capital investment
• Neo-liberalism aimed to reduce taxes on certain imports and exports, promote free global movement of capital, restrict government influence on the economy, implement tax/spending cuts, and have a constantly changing workforce, allowing markets to operate globally and within a nation
• "Capitalism was global and the globe was capitalist" after communism's collapse
• World trade skyrocketed
• Developing countries remained reliant on exports/raw materials
• Foreign direct investment increased
• Pushback: Resistance to Economic Globalization
• Transnational Corporations (TNC) are large worldwide corporations that make deliveries and produce goods to many countries, constantly moving to find cheaper locations and fewer restrictions for more profit. Examples include Nike, Royal Dutch Shell, Toyota, Sony, General Motors
• Largest economic units by the year 2000

  • TNCs