As I think I have mentioned, I am helping to organize a youth conference on climate change. We have a fabulous website up and running and like all websites is available to Internet users in most parts of the world. While the conference is geared towards Canadian youth, we have had inquiries from environmentally minded youth in Kenya and Vietnam. In both cases the youth are involved in environmental issues in their home and country and are interested in coming to the conference in order to gain insight and an enhanced perspective through collaborating with others from another country.
There is no doubt that this is yet another example of globalization – the internet has allowed people from various countries to come together and communicate – possibly even meet face to face. Globalization is generally considered to be a “bad thing”… resulting in culture disintegration and corporate takeover. But is it necessarily a bad thing? In this instance, is it bad because two international youth want to come to a conference in Canada and then take what they learned back to their home countries and improve their inspiration for the projects they are working on?
This is only one case of Internet-mediated communication enabling an entirely unprecedented communication regime with participants from all around the world. This is globalization. Maybe with a little direction pointing, we can turn this into a really good thing… not something that ruins culture but enhances understanding and appreciation of the varying cultures of our world; or maybe something that allows for positive cooperation and collaboration on environmetal projects… The possibilities are endless. We just have to get rid of that ignorance!
That’s interesting and I think it’s happening more and more in all fields. But here’s
another myth that ICT would reduce the amount of travel people do. Seems like the opposite
people get in touch through ICT and after they want to travel more.