IT & Globalisation Part 1

Most of us especially Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z in particular do not really know about the significance changes that the Information Technology really has brought to our life. This is because most people do not really try to understand how the world really was before the coming of Information Age and Globalisation Era. The beginning of the Information Age can be traced after the Industrial Revolution in Europe took place in the 18th Century. In order to really understand the present situation, we must explore the past. Please understand that before the Industrial Revolution, the average life-expectancy of a human being is only around 40 years which is only half of today and about 80 percent of the total human population are engaging in agriculture whereas in comparison to today, only around 8 percent to 10 percent of human population work in agriculture. These alone should give us the impression of how different our life have change.

Globalisation (Source: Google)

This different is cause by the different in the level of technology available in the period. In the past, about 80 percent of the population are needed to wok in agriculture in order to support the minor 20 percent. However, with technological innovation, less people are needed as machines are used to create a much more productive, effective and efficient agriculture. This has allow more people to wok in other sectors such as manufacturing. Besides that, the technological innovation in the early 1800's has also allow human to fight diseases and this is also supported by the increase in agriculture production where this mean that more people can eat sufficient food. Thus, this increase the life-expectancy dramatically and supported by the reduction childbirth fatality cause the exponential increase in human population such as shown in the graph below.

Graph of Population Growth Throughout History (Source: UN)

This increase in human population increase the demand for innovation even further as every country is struggling to meet the needs of the ever growing population of their countries and the challenges in the global condition. This creates a situation in the 18th Century where the countries particularly European nations are competing with each others in order to benefits from the new industrial and globalised world. This trend continues until the 20th Century with Japan and the United States of America (USA) entering the competition and the human population grow to more than 3 billion people.

Such as stated before, the increase in human population is a direct result of the improvement in the technological innovation and it is this growth that catalyze the spur in the R&D of Information Technology (IT). Great Britain for example in the late 19th Century has colonies in Canada, India, Malaya, Australia and New Zealand. This creates the need for Great Britain to establish a communicative system to interact with their representatives in their respective colonies and it is this need that allow the innovation of telegram and Morse Code. These systems are then even further developed to create an even more efficient communication network and it will later gives birth to the internet. 

Globalization I: The Upside (Source: Youtube)

Exclusively, IT and Globalisation Era has allow human beings to increase the quality of life very significantly compared to before where our life-expectancy have double, less fatality in childbirth, healthy population, more food supply and vast market availability. Therefore, it is without doubt that technological innovation and globalisation have help to support and make our life easier and healthier but it do come with consequences and this will be discussed in the next post.

"Necessity is the Mother of Invention"

Plato