Globalization, Technology, and Philosophy, David Tabachnick
and Toivo Koivukoski, eds., Albany: State University of New York Press,
2004, pp. vi, 251.
Technology is an underlying cause, probably the chief underlying
cause, of the complex phenomenon of globalization. That much is virtually
axiomatic among globalization theorists and social scientists generally.
From at least early modernity to the present, global flows of people,
commodities, ideas and information have expanded, and sped up. In recent
times, trans-border social networks and international governance have
become increasingly important. Political decision making is increasingly
directed at management of the planet as a whole; the world of politics is
increasingly Earth. All of these aspects of globalization (and
others besides) depend on the development and deployment of technologies,
and on the development and deployment of technoscientific knowledge.