This document discusses the role of technology and media in globalization. It outlines how technological innovations like container ships, air freight, FedEx, and the internet have facilitated the flow of goods and people globally. It also discusses how new medical technologies can spread worldwide but may be too expensive for less developed nations. The document then examines the shift from Western domination of global media to competition from companies like Al Jazeera and the rise of independent online media. It analyzes how new digital platforms like Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have become major global media forces and how the internet both reduces nation-state influence but is also subject to barriers like China's firewall.

1. SOC 451
HIGH-TECH GLOBAL FLOWS
Technology&Media&Internet
Asst. Prof. Fatma Altinbas Sarigul

2. TECHNOLOGY
• Technological innovations are strongly related to
globalization.
• One example of a more recent technological
development in the realm of commerce was the
creation of the world’s first container ship in
1956.
• The development and expansion of air freight-
Boeing 747.
• The founding of Federal Express (FedEx).
• The creation of the Universal Product Code (UPC).
• The development of personal computers (1970)
and internet.

3. Medical Technologies
• New health-care technologies (MRIs, CAT
scans,etc.)
• Easy to flow around the world.
• Too expensive for undeveloped nations and no
availability of trained personnel to use the
technology.
• The flow of pharmaceuticals- impact of profit.

4. MEDIA
• The conventional view was that it was the
Western media (specially US) and Western
technologies; that was imperialistic and that
dominated less developed nations and their
cultures.
• Lately, other views have emerged that
American media is not as powerful as before
global media giants have arisen to compete.
For example: Arabic Al Jazeera, Bollywood.

5. ‘New’ Global Media
• Apple iTunes, Facebook, Twitter, Google,
Microsoft.
• Indymedia: The rise of independent media
• Marshall McLuhan, ‘Global Village’

6. ‘New’ Global Media
• Guy DeBord- Media Spectacle; the globalization
of such a spectacle and the ability of spectacle to
produce and reproduce capitalism and consumer
culture.
• To the Frankfurt theorists, the media were of
economic significance as a new source of capital
realization, but their more important role is in the
social control of people and their ability to
influence and shape the larger culture.

7. INTERNET
• The reducing influence of the nation-states.
• ıt has prompted a flat world thesis, anyone
can be involved in it.
• Creation of barriers; for example: Chinese
government’s ‘Great Firewall’.