Web 2.0 and the globalization of disaster
3.12.2011
Waaaaay back in the dark ages of Web 1.0 when I was in college, the buzzword for many of my classes was "Globalization." It was a boogie man that haunted everything and was the cause of great distress. Did globalization bring social benefits to the far corners of the planet and lift isolated tribes out of starvation and poverty or was it a homogenizing force of cultural imperialism? Either way, it was clear that the driving force of globalization was economics. Everyone participated in commerce, and so it was through the tentacles of trade that for better or worse change was made.
That was 10 years ago, and the influence of global economics is stronger than ever. Globalization is still here and still happening, but, at least in my liberal effete social circles, we don't talk about it. Perhaps we turned our concerns inward or perhaps we saw that local cultures evolving and branching into even greater individuation rather than disappearing before the (un-)monolithic West.
The world is becoming more interconnected, but in the place of economics, we are seeing the social and emotional impacts of improved communications networks. Who really remembers the cyclone that struck Bangladesh in 1991, killing 138,000 people? Or the Venezuelan mudslides that killed 15,000 people in 1999? Or the 1985 volcanic eruption in Colombia that killed 25,000 people known as the Armero Tragedy? Perhaps it is just the passage of time that has dampened my memories of these events, but I don't think so: they just never registered in my life. Going further back in time, half a million people died in the Bhola cyclone in 1970 and 2-3 million people died in the Yellow River floods in China in 1931. But few people know about these tragedies, and even fewer care. And frankly, why should they?
Unless you had family or commercial in these places, events on the other side of the world had no impact on your life beyond a small blurb in the morning paper. Events on the other side of the world looked the same whether it was 1899 or 1999, globalization be damned. But starting with the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, something funny happened: we started caring. The suffering of poor people on the other side of the world stopped being a series of Suzanne Somers commercials and started being real.
I for one will never forget when I started seeing videos like these showing up on the youtube and TV news.
And the power of video in the hands of everyman brought with it an emotional impact that previous globalization theorists likely never imagined. Global economics brought cell phones to the third-world and global communication networks brought the video into our homes, allowing people to emotionally connect to the events taking place in locations never visited.
Today, Web 2.0 brings every disaster to an emotional climax. Social networks spread constant reminders of the suffering through shared links, but they also spread hope and relief. My parents were in New Zealand when the Christchurch earthquake struck, and I learned of their safety through our family friend's 19 year old daughter's Facebook update. We have friends in Japan today who tweeted their 10-mile journey home after the earthquake shut down the Tokyo transportation infrastructure. Web 1.0 brought news instantly to our desktops, but no relief from our worrying. Web 2.0 brings both news and the answers to our questions.
