Does Globalization Equal Contamination?

We as individuals are able to consume technology and adapt it to our needs. Technology has been adapted to the point where even underdeveloped countries are able to skip several steps in getting to a higher technological level without having the modern equipment that more more modern countries had to go through. One such example is the people of the African Congo. As Dr. Blevens explained in class, these people are using advance satellite phone to communicate and receive information on their crops without even having the most basic forms of electricity, and charge their phone with the car battery. Is their use of technology making them a less "authentic" culture, even though this intrusion of modernization is helping them? I don't thinks so.

Change allows people to have more choices. change has also made the quality of life better for these farmers. This use of technology isn't hindering them in any way, so why would people want to force them to go back to using more primitive techniques, when they could feed their families better when they have more access to information? In our country new knowledge allows us the ability to choose what we want to use and what we want to discard. This is true for other counties as well. As Dr. Appiah put it in his article, “The Case for Contamination”, he mentions that when scholar Larry Strelitz showed several popular American soap operas to different counties, each took away a different meaning, based on their cultural values and beliefs. This means that an individual will take what they want to take from an new medium, and will mold it fit their needs.

I agree with Appiah that "Talk of authencity now just amounts to telling other people what they ought to value in their own traditions." Globilazation is a way to mix and match cultures, to evolve through the new knowledge received from other people. Once people are valued, instead of concentrating on cultures, globalization will be viewed differently.