The Scope of Technological Globalisation

The term 'globalisation' has been used widely and loosely. On the one hand there are the descriptives, of increased flows of goods, services, capital and people. On the other hand there is the prescriptive agenda, that there is a new global era, ruling out certain economic and political choices. The blurring of the lines between the two categories-of the descriptive and the prescriptive-presents the obvious starting point for academic investigation. And in both cases, the role played by technology takes centre stage. In the first case the argument is that the new developments in information technology, computing, telecommunications, broadcasting and so on have opened up the world economy. As for the second category, such developments are seen as leaving national governments helpless in the face of global corporate players. In this paper we therefore reconsider some of the evidence, focussing particular on the role of technology.