Globalization and global consciousness : levels of connectivity

Across the contemporary world, the question of connectivity has emerged as the normal condition of being and acting as a ‘person-in-the-world’. Being connected has assumed multiple meanings; most of them are positive. Who, but perhaps a few customary villagers, traditional monks, and modern eccentrics, are happy be relegated to a communications backwater? Parochialism, reclusiveness, and isolation are nouns that conflict with those desirable places where modern and postmodern relations dominate. In globalizing cities across the world, hyperconnected individuals might complain about the intense demands extracted from them by their numerous information and communication technologies, but none of them want to be disconnected. Today’s condition of connectivity has both important and banal consequences. For a new generation, mediated connectivity is basic to their identity—with significant consequences for their patterns of consumption and attachments to new commodities and brands. Being an acolyte of social media like Twitter or Facebook has become a precondition for the construction of such an identity. In Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, and Brossard, people queue outside Apple stores, willing to wait hours and days for the commercial release of new versions of the iPhone or iPad. Extremely useful for marketing purposes, such street scenes are also depressing images of a changing world of connectivity fetishism.