The Digital Civilizations Interviews

Somewhere between these two definitions, globalisation designates an historical process by which individuals, human activities, and political structures have seen the growth of their mutual dependence and material and immaterial exchanges over significant distances, on a global scale. It also has to do with the growing interdependence of economies, and contributes to the expansion of exchanges and human interaction. Beyond the simple economic aspects, the development of the exchange of goods and services, in place since the end of the 1980s when new financial markets on a global scale came into being, also covers cultural, political, and sociological affairs:

• the cultural aspect of a very large part of the global population gaining access to elements of other, often very far-off cultures, on the one hand, and the developed world's collective realisatio that many diverse cultures exist on a global level.
• the political aspect represented by the development of internaional organisations and NGOs.
• The sociological aspect of globalisation as summed up by Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist and professor emeritus at the universities of Warsaw and Leeds:

«'Globalisation is inescapable and irreversible. We already live in a world on interconnectedness and interdependence on a global scale. Everything that happens somewhere affects the life and the future of people everywhere else. When we evaluate the measures we could take in a given place, we have to take reactions elsewhere into consideration. No sovereign territory, no matter how large, populated, or rich it is, can protect its conditions of living, security, long-term prosperity, social model or the existence of its inhabitants alone. Our mutual dependence is being exerted on a global scale (...).” Several possible actions are possible for appropriating today's definition of this already very political process of globalisation, which varies according to the field (be it economics, culture, or politics) and historical period in question.