or is it the other way around?

Is technology killing globalization, asks Insider Pro. These days, it may indeed seem that “the new trend is deglobalization – or a retreat into localism or nationalism”. The article also argues that “Deglobalization seems to be largely a tech issue”. That statement feels wrong to me, or at least incomplete. If anything, this is largely a digital tech issue. But let’s focus on the main question:

Is the world getting less global?

As signs that this may be the case, the article mentions:

1. the rise of populism in politics
2. the awareness that Coronavirus, however it ends, will not be the last “pandemic” (however you define that word), and that “To stop such an outbreak, the best remedy is radical, sudden and temporary deglobalization”
3. projects and attempts to split the global internet in more or less separate areas, as in China, Russia and elsewhere
4. regulations that have the unwanted, but same effect of splitting the internet in non-communicating areas, like the european GDPR. Or at least of making “global” search engines return different results to people in different areas
5. the wish to have complete control on one’s 5G networks, which is behind the “US vs Huawei” saga
6. the retreat of companies like Uber or Starbucks from China and other non-western markets
7. last but not least, “social networks themselves that are algorithmically deglobalizing social networks”, serving each cluster of users

In spite of all these signs, the article concludes that “a broad reversal of the globalization trend… is illusory”, because, among other things:

• economically, nations are becoming more dependent on each other
• Coronavirus proves that, rather than relying on a single country, it is much better to diversify manufacturing internationally
• today’s social networks will be replaced anyway by “anti-social” small, personal social networks

All this is probably true, but I would like to start from there to ask the opposite question:

What if it is globalization that is killing technology?

Not technology in general, no. Only what passes for “innovative” technology, a definition which has wrongly come to mean only “digital technology, Silicon Valley-style”. Globalization (and the financialization of the economy, which in part is the same thing) has hypercharged this specific subset of technology, subtracting attention and resources to investments, research and development in other fields. In turn, digital tech has accelerated globalization, by creating products that, by definition:

• can be “mass-produced” everywhere and then “exported” worldwide much faster, and cheaper than anything else
• in many cases, create and exploit network effects that only benefit global monopolies, antitrust proposal be damned

If we look at it from this side, we may well argue that globalization has, if not “killed” heavily stifled real innovation in many social and (traditional) technological fields. But we may equally argue that globalization is killing digital technology too. Because, at least so far, globalization has only accepted, and finance, applications of digital technology that are pervasive like cancer, because killing their hosts is the only way they could be as profitable as demanded, as quickly as wanted. See points 1 to 7 above.

Image source: The Paradigm: Deglobalisation