Page 28 - Communications Satellites Global Change Agents

1. SATELLITES AS WORLDWIDE CHANGE AGENTS 5

corporations, global financial transactions, and science and technology, and suggest
that the nation state is losing influence and control in our modern world. Each year
those who make their way to the Global Economic Conference in Davos, Switzer-
land, seem to increasingly define those individuals and entities with true power in a
21st-century world. At the opposite end of the spectrum, religious mullahs are also
attacking the nation state on the basis of cultural and ethnic grounds.
The world has certainly experienced more change in its economic, cultural, so-
cial, scientific, and political systems in the last 40 years than at any time in his-
tory. Further, the rate of global change due to satellites, telecommunications, in-
formation technology, electronic funds exchange, and other forms of advanced
science and technology will, if anything, continue to accelerate ever more rapidly
in the years ahead. When one considers that the value of global electronic fund
transfers in 2002 were about $300 trillion and ran at over $1 trillion per day for
2003, it is hard to deny that the world today is dramatically different than only two
generations ago.
In short, this is not an easy time for a world shrunk by technology and yet frac-
tured by fundamental religious beliefs and terrorism. One part of our modern
world believes that the structure of our world can be defined in dollars, patents,
and gigabytes of information, but another part, steeped in radical beliefs and con-
cepts such as Jihad, define our world much differently. The question is whether
the 300-year-old concept of the nation state can cope effectively with this ever-
speeding swirl of change and conflict. As satellites have made our world smaller
and smaller, the elements of conflict and cultural difference have begun to emerge
as increasingly important, and the nation state appears to be in need of redefini-
tion. Some would say that the terrorists' attacks on September 11, 2001, and the
U.S. response in terms of a war against terrorism mark the start of the end of the
Westphalian concept of the world politic. Yet the rise of the world corporation,
the emergence of global entertainment and news, and the pervasive reach of mod-
ern telecommunications and information networks gave rise to fundamental shifts
in the world community decades before the Al Qaida attacks on the World Trade
Center buildings and the Pentagon.
Thus, we seem to have advanced technology in conflict with the traditional
nation state as well as with traditional religious beliefs and cultural values. At the
start of the 21st century, a third axis of technological conflict with yet another value
has increasingly emerged. There is increasing concern about technology and devel-
opment and its potential conflict with our environment, global warming, and the
need for sustainable patterns of living over the longer term. Some fear that popula-
tion explosion, unchecked consumption of petrochemical fuels, and other destruc-
tive environmental practices threaten our future. Runaway development, consump-
tion, and unchecked technology are seen by many as a challenge to the
sustainability of the human race on Earth.
Recent projections showing that the population growth could ebb by the mid-
21 st century and the world population could actually shrink in coming decades are