Blog 1: What Is Globalization? — Cho Yunseo

 1. What I Understood from the Reading and Class

   Before taking this class and doing the reading, I simply thought globalization meant active trade between countries, easier access to foreign cultures through the internet and SNS, and smoother communication with other nations.
   However, through the class, I realized that globalization has many more diverse aspects. It is a complex mix of the expansion of political systems, connections across culture and society, and economic interdependence. What stood out to me was that globalization didn't just suddenly start in the modern internet era. Rather, it is an extension of a long historical process where humans have been connected with one another over a long time. I also came to understand how deeply it affects various parts of our lives. In other words, when an event happens on the other side of the world, I realized I shouldn't just think of it as something unrelated and ignore it. Instead, I felt that we need to recognize the world as one connected space and pay more attention to what happens in other countries.

2. What I Found Interesting

   The most interesting part of this topic was that globalization doesn't automatically make the whole world the same. We often easily assume that as globalization progresses, cultures and lifestyles around the world will become Westernized or completely uniform. But I learned that as the world becomes more connected, people actually tend to value and express their own unique cultures and characteristics even more. It was fascinating to see how everyone seems to become similar, yet the distinct traits of each region remain alive and active at the same time. The way two seemingly opposite things like global commonalities and local uniqueness appear together within the huge wave of globalization felt fresh and interesting.
   Also, we take it for granted nowadays to use foreign social media on our smartphones, consume brand products from all over the world, and enjoy cultural content from other countries. As covered in the class, activities of social media like Facebook and Twitter or multinational corporations are typical examples that connect people's lifestyles worldwide. The environment where news or trends from the other side of the world reaches my hands in just a few seconds made me realize that this is truly living globalization in our daily lives.

3. A Question and Discussion Angle

   Through the class, I learned that because of globalization, physical distance is no longer a big issue, and we are experiencing a 'time space compression' where the whole world connects instantly. However, I noticed that as technology develops and the world feels smaller, we often end up communicating in real-time and feeling a deeper connection with online friends or influencers on the other side of the world rather than our physical neighbors living right next door.

Main Question : Thanks to the internet and SNS, the physical and time distance between us and the rest of the world has become extremely close. On the flip side, however, communication with our physical neighbors and local community right next door has become more distant and disconnected. Do you think the hyper connection brought by globalization has widened our real human relationships, or do you think it has actually made them narrower?

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