With galloping globalization, everything moves -- news, entertainment, rumors, images, terror, money, capital, technology, knowledge, people. But everything does not move equally well, equally smoothly, equally fast, or equally freely. Almost every sensible person wants the global movement of terror, for example, to stop altogether.
Of all these things, those that can be converted into digital signs move the easiest and the fastest. No wonder it is media and finance that are at the center stage of globalization.
People, unfortunately, cannot be converted into digital signs.
In decreasing order, the ease/speed/freedom of movement of people diminish as we move from (a) diplomats to (b) tourists to (c) executives to (d) entertainers to (e) skilled labor to (f) unskilled labor to (g) refugees to (h) criminals. Immigration policies, especially of the rich nations, are particularly concerned about (e) through (h) in the preceding list. Many would like such movements to stop, or be so tightly regulated that they become trickling flows under intense microscopic scrutiny. Immigration hawks are also very concerned that people try to misrepresent their true nature in global movements: unskilled job seekers may claim to be political refugees, and skilled laborers may pretend to be executives seeking investment opportunities.
Internet and cyberspace have added new twists to the global movement of labor. With cyber labor, the laborer can remain rooted in her homeland. It is tasks that move digitally and instantly to the laborer. While the cyberspace technologies were not invented by Immigration hawks, they just as well might be! There is perhaps no greater friend of immigration opponents than Internet and allied technologies -- these technologies are more potent than guns, watch towers, guard posts, attack dogs, barbed wires, electric fences, and concrete walls. They keep those rushing hordes out, simply by removing their incentives to rush!
Of course, what the myopic immigration hawks overlook is the fact that as tasks move, so do money and knowledge.
Globalization based on cyber labor has barely begun.
Corporations would go to any length to slice and dice their value chains into tasks that can be digitally transmitted to India, China, Vietnam and the Philippines; and those *#&ingly stubborn non-digitizable tasks for which they must shell out $10-70 per hour.
Of course, many in the rich world are exercised and incensed about such callous corporate behavior, especially in an election year when indignant railing against such corporate behavior could pull in votes.
So, winds of protectionism begin to blow. But such winds are really metaphorical -- wafting digital signs that can flash across the planet. These winds of protectionism thus reach Bangalore, India in almost the same instant that they reach Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
So, what do those controlling or providing cyber power from locations like Hyderabad and Ho Chi Minh City do? Some of them turn into cyber capitalists in their own right, striving to build global businesses and global brands that are not susceptible to political ups and downs such as "backlash against outsourcing." Remember the money and knowledge that flew across the net along with the cyber tasks? These provide the starting fuel to the upstart cyber capitalists from distant exotic lands.
------
Given the immense success of "Lord of the Rings" movies, especially given their efficient global production planning, this idea is buzzing in my head...a biblical-mythical-cyber movie where this scraggly bearded Mel Gibsonish character raises his hands skywards and thunders: "O... What Hath the Net Wrought?"
-------
Nik Dholakia
