CULTURAL EXPERT: 5th post

CULTURAL EXPERT: YANTING






http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_5/dolfsma/

Music, it’s not just putting a few notes together. It is an arrangement of different frequencies to produce a universal love, and the word here is UNIVERSAL. People from all around the world listen to the same songs. Their languages do not matter; their race and religion do not matter. Thus, it is globalised.

There are different kinds of music, such as rap, country, rock, disco and pop rock with different formats. Furthermore, with internet booming, people share their music through cyberspace with no boundaries.

“With a global music scene there is ripe opportunity for cross-pollination but at the same time in order for mass appeal an accidental aesthetic imperialism which emerges, in which culturally specific and rhythmically unique musical idioms are all transformed to have the same disco beat behind them.”

Taken from: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/schmidt/schmidt-music-globalisation-2001.html

‘With the every growing N’Sync fan clubs and Britney clones, the world is turning into a stage for pop culture and its glamorous unattainable standards.’

Taken from: http://www.wowessays.com/dbase/ab4/ios47.shtml

Music has “grown over the last fifty years, from Elvis Presley and The Beatles to today’s top stars, to support a global industry worth $30 billion. The culture around pop music is constantly changing. It is difficult to predict where the next success will come from, and what the audience will buy into next. It is perhaps this lack of predictability that makes the pop world so alluring, attracting new generations of fans willing to buy the next wave of products.

Up to 90% of the global music market is accounted for by just five corporations: EMI Records, Sony, Vivendi Universal, AOL Time Warner and BMG. Collectively, these corporations are known as ‘the Big Five’, and operate in all of the major music markets in the world. Each of the corporations maintains their headquarters in the US, the largest of the world’s markets.”

Taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1042_globalmusic/

To conclude, all those that I have mentioned are all traces of globalization regarding culture.

Your cultural expert, Yanting!

CULTURAL EXPERT: 4th post

CULTURAL EXPERT: YANTING

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2482097,00.html
http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/362073/blog-growth-dips-as-technorati-tackles-splog-problem.html?keywords=technorati

As the article suggests, blogging has became a phenomenon over the past few years. People all over the world are starting to blog, be it using blogger, livejournal or diaryland. It all started out as an online personal diary, but has evolved to become blogshops where people can purchase items online or even a platform for people to discuss certain issues.

People can read off from a foreign blog, and even though it may not be of their native language, they translate into other languages like English and repost it for others to read. This is how blogs have changed the method local and global issues are discussed, becoming a reflection of this interconnectedness and an increasingly globalized world.

Everybody from all over the world can read what you typed and posted, it uses the cyberspace that does not affect people with their distance between each other. It bridges both language and culture, between both sides of the countries. Like MSN messenger service, it uses instant messenging allowing people to chat with other people even from far away countries.

From the article,
“Every person sitting in front of a computer is a peer and together they are creating the global digital society,” he said.

Therefore, blogging is indeed globalised and it connects people from one side of the globe to another. Just look at what you are looking right now, blogger?!

Your cultural expert, Yanting!

CULTURAL EXPERT: 3rd post

CULTURAL EXPERT: YANTING

http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/2003/0730glocal.htm

http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/special/2007/0410bottomline.htm

http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/2005/0215mongolia.htm

People from different countries speak different languages. But what is happening now, is that with globalization taking place, other languages somehow gets eroded and it leads to the rise of a language, English language. Even though not everybody knows and speaks English, there is an increasing trend of people attending extra English lesson.

Through globalization, the English language has achieved a status as the world’s official language and it is now a dominant language for two billion people in at least 75 countries. As English is the most common language to communicate scientific, technological, academic, and international trade information. English is clearly the world's lingua franca, but how did it get that way? Part of the reason is the feedback loop driving its history - a dynamic which may serve to illustrate how globalization often is the result of a natural course of events: before English infiltrated the world, many of the world's languages infiltrated English.

English, like so many other aspects of Western culture, has the potential to bring people together, or the power to divide people into classified groups. As the debate goes on, English will continue to grow and change with the same force that has always driven the patchworking of language: the natural desire to exchange goods and ideas. Thus, with that we can see that globalization is also partly due to the dominance of the English Language.

Your cultural expert, Yanting!

CULTURAL EXPERT: 2nd post

CULTURAL EXPERT: YANTING

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/analysis/2004/0115plato.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/2004/0730exchangeprograms.htm

America is an influential area that it gradually leads to its culture being one that affects the rest of the world. In addition, there are certain icons that associate with the American culture. For example, McDonald’s, Starbucks, or even sports like basketball. I am sure that these logos are not unfamiliar to you as we can find them almost anywhere, even in countries like Singapore. There are 30,000 restaurants in over 120 countries. There is also hard rock café, that is situated in certain countries and they have already become international. Thus, we can say that it is all globalized even if one does not associate it with American culture as they are still known, globally.

On the other hand, it is not just the American culture, many cultures from other places are dispersing but the dominant one is still the American culture. For example, British TV produced shows like, ‘American idol’ and ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ which possesses a threat to US shows. With that, Disney is also popular not only amongst the kids, but young adults and young adults as well. This is also part of globalization, having the American culture to be rippling outwards, in terms of music, movies, television and even software.

Additionally, conflicts will occur if there is a great cultural value gap. American culture is a mixture of influences and approaches from all around the world.

“In May 1999, a Pew poll found that 71% of Americans agreed that cultural diversity was a "major reason" for America's success”.
http://www.americans-world.org/digest/global_issues/globalization/culture.cfm

On top of that, to show that globalization is taking place and has taken place, the second article states, in the last line,

"It's just like America," he said. "I don't feel so homesick."

Your cultural expert, Yanting!

Ethnical issue of cloning

Dolly and her first born lamb, Bonnie

Dolly, a Finn Dorsett ewe was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell. She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in the United Kingdom and lived there until her death when she was six. Dolly's publicity was inevitable because it showed that the genetic material from a specific adult cell programmed to express only a distinct subset of its genes, could be reprogrammed to grow an entirely new organism. However, amidst the celebration of a success in technological advancement in cloning, a more critical issue arose from such a success. It is the ethnical issue behind cloning. There have been many ethnical concerns in controversial issues on the cutting edge of science, cloning in this case. Cloning will do more harm than good to the world, as it challenges the sanctity of life and question even the most basic individuality of each being human being. In a world where human clones are present, it might be conceivable that parents are no longer significant, for they are merely ‘donors’. Even religious groups are beginning to oppose such act of cloning, on the grounds that life beings are conception. Life begins on the inception of pregnancy. There were even arguments if technology allow for successful cloning of humans, prejudice may develop against the clones, as they are being seen as ‘lesser’ form of human beings. The social implications of an human clones, have been explored in the famous movie, The Island.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloning

Technological Expert - Ernest Ting

CULTURAL EXPERT: 1st post

CULTURAL EXPERT: YANTING!

articles:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/2006/0609kofifootball.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/2004/olympics0810.htm

When one mentions the Olympics and the World Cup, I can almost guarantee that nobody will be unfamiliar with. Both events are international sporting competitions that are held in different countries every four years for Olympics and every two years for the World Cup. How then, do we relate them with globalization?

In the first article, the writer, Kofi A Annan, mentioned that the World Cup actually makes the United Nations green with envy. This is a funny sight as a large international organization is actually jealous of a sporting organization, FIFA. But the truth is that they are not as popular as FIFA and the reason is that FIFA has more members than United Nations. Furthermore, soccer is a game that appeals to all, young or old, of all race and religions, and even though it may seem to appeal more to males, females do enjoy the sport.

Everyone talks about soccer, regardless of which team they support, they stay up till next morning just to see a group of people running over a little ball for 90 minutes. Soccer forges an identity amongst people, people become friends or ‘brothers’ if they know that the other person supports the same team as them, be it Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool or even Tampines Rovers. Therefore, it is evident that soccer is a more than popular sport and it just cannot compare with the United Nations as they deal with international issues that does not exactly interest or appeal to the public. Thus, concluding that it is indeed globalization.

Similarly, Olympics is another event that almost everyone is the world knows of and fascinates them. Even though not everybody is a sportsman, they too, will catch the opening of the Olympics, the last man lighting up the stadium with the torch, blazing the whole area with the sporting sensation. It is, like the World Cup, an event that catches the attention of many, creating a topic of conversation when one is in school or at work. Thus, even those that do not have interests in sporting events are still interested as it is a big event that generates competition between countries just to host the event.

Even though the second article focuses on the Olympics being a platform to create and strengthen the identity among individual nations, writer, Emma Wensing also states that it is a global broadcast, indicating that it still relates to globalization. The reason being that almost the whole world will watch the exact happenings over television, and although some countries focus more on their national players, the competition is still the same, nobody watches a different one. That is globalization.

Your cultural expert, Yanting!

environmental
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2007/2007-05-10-01.asp
This article is about the climate change caused by globalisation affecting people living in low- lying areas in the pacific. There is a very large amount of financial assistance provided to them.
A new environmental strategy backed by a $100 million grant package from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) was agreed to on Wednesday by the heads of state and top government leaders of the 15 small island states and territories at the Pacific Leaders Conference.
The people living in these Pacific states are in grave danger from the rising ocean levels. Due to their low level of elevation, they will be among the first environmental refugees should the ocean levels continue rising.
All these happenings are due to the changing global climate caused by excessive pollution by humans, from transport or industrial uses. These all play a part in globalisation. For example, the improvements in transportation now enable people to get from one continent to another in a matter of hours, when it would have taken days a hundred years back. However the downside to this is the huge number of polluting cars. Also, due to huge worldwide demand, factories are built to cater to the huge demand. These factories often spew enormous amounts of pollution.
The pollution rises up and creates a greenhouse effect, causing the earth to be heated up. The ice in the poles will thus melt and result in the rise in sea levels.
This $100 million marks a huge increase in environmental funding in that region, as for the past 15 years all the funding there amounted to only $86 million. The $100 million, which will be spread over 3 years, will allow countries to focus their strategies on a set of priority issues for the global environment, build and capture synergies, and apply a common set of tracking tools to monitor progress, instead of working one project at a time.

Nathaniel