Chapter 8: Civilization in the 21st. Century

Introduction

The development and elaboration of civilizations take a long time. Chinese civilization lasted 6,000 years; even the relatively young Western civilization has flourished for 1,200 years. But now, in the 21st century, we are confronting the rise of two new civilizations: Global and Virtual. These civilizations are driven by rapidly developing information technology, with computer networks and smartphones supporting global commerce and social networking. Meanwhile, the speed of computing is accelerating. By about 2045, artificial intelligence or machine intelligence probably will equal or exceed human intelligence. And we’ll see the Homo cyborg, human machines.

Centrally Arising Civilizations in the 21st. Century

The world today encounters four extreme challenges: the transformation from Western Civilization to Global Civilization, the development of Virtual Civilization, a new great crisis, especially seen in the Western and the Eastern Civilizations and the possible Clash of Civilizations.

Globalization in our lifetimes was initiated by a political platform that arose when a new world order emerged following the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991. Funds from the United States and the European Union supported the new markets that had been opened for direct investment. German, English, and French capital was entering the new markets as soon as political barriers fell, and soon American money found opportunities in this region. However, American capital and business from the West Coast of the United States looked to the shorter distance to China and Asia. China took on the new business of outsourcing manufacturing. And then market socialism with a Chinese character was warmly accepted by the Chinese Communist Party. Information systems utilizing the underground press substantially impacted the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991. Simultaneously, the Internet became the central potent global information system and this intensified globalization. Today, if the Internet were to stop operations, likely the global economy would stop as well, since that computer net is so embedded in today’s world economy.

Internet was pushing the development of the Globalization Wave. This wave led to the advance of the Global economy, then to the free flow of information and capital, and in many cases, to the cross-border movement of experienced workers and executives. When the word “virtual” was first introduced in information technology, it applied to memory simulated by computer. More recently, the term has been applied to entities such as things, organizations, processes, and people that exist but are simulated using information technology. Thus, a digital library would be any library that applies information technology. Thus, a digital library would be any library that applies information technology. The expansion of the Global Economy and the rise of the information infrastructure globally have led to a boom in the development of social networks. The networks allow for the exchange of information about facts, events, feelings, situations, activities, pictures, videos, etc. These emerging social networks have led to the birth of collective “mind spheres” of intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom at global and national levels. Of course, this new set of mind spheres will not happen everywhere, but they will emerge where there are synergies of human will and organizational might. This collective brain, or rather mind, can multiply our social and cognitive potential. With such a powerful tool, humanity’s consciousness can become broader, deeper, and more sophisticated, and perhaps the world will be able to solve problems.

The State of the World Civilization Today

In the past, a great crisis of civilization followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE. The reason why Rome fell is debated but many argue. The fall of Rome directly resulted from the invasion by the so-called barbarians of Central Europe. Today, the modern world enters a second great crisis of civilization. The present, second crisis of civilization is going to occur beause of the transformation of the Western Civilization into a Global Civilization, and this will generate internal crises in almost all dimensions of society. The paradox of this second great crisis of civilization is that it is invisible at first sight. There is no global war, no major epidemics or a grand planetary climate catastrophe. Yet, there is the fantastic development of the Internet, which had led to a fast and vast information flow between masses of people representing all possible tribes, nations, and societies.

There are many aspects to the major crises, which together cause the second great crisis of civilization. These crises can be stated as the titles; Over-communication crisis, super-capacity crisis, global business crisis, crisis of religion, population crisis, ecological crisis, crisis of natural resources, food crisis, crisis of technology, crisis of science, administrative crisis, war crisis, media crisis, political crisis, culture and trust crisis, education crisis, clash of civilizations, migration crisis.

When we analyze the rise of new civilizations, we should apply Arnold Toynbee’s criteria for definitions of civilizations. One criterion is the faith of a civilization. The new civilizations are bringing with them secular beliefs. According to the Oxford Dictionary, religion is “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially God or gods.” But, also secular religion can be found: they advance ideas, theories or philosophies which involve no spiritual component yet possess qualities similar to those of religion. One such faith within Global Civilization is found in spiritual commitment to the tenets of its secular business regime. This can be characterized as follows: Belief in business and business rules as dogma.

From the societal point of view, these rules are highly debatable. In the 21st century, the extraordinary faith in business eagerly transforms Western Civilization from an industrial to a service economy that cannot sustain the American Dream. On the other hand, Friedman (2015) argues that the world is “flat,” because the developing nations are going economically up and developed countries are going economically down. Some even argue that this constitutes historic justice since the West’s development was based on colonialism, slavery, and Darwinian capitalism.

Since according to Arnold Toynbee (1995), religion – what is called here faith -- characterizes each civilization, let us now describe the faith of Virtual Civilization, a new, emerging, powerful civilization

Beliefs of the Virtual Civilization entails the following; virtuality itself, virtuality’s knowledge and virtuality liturgy.

Virtuality Doctrine is what keeps Virtuality as a religion. It is practiced currently by billion or more devotees and offers the world some gurus, among them billionaires who are owners of social networks. In the early decades of the current century, the tenets of this doctrine have become clear. They are based on the five rules. These five rules of the faith of the emerging Virtual Civilization are subject to debate from adherents of the older civilizations. Despite such negative attacks on the faith of the Virtual Civilization and on the virtuality rules, they are intensively practiced worldwide by younger generations, which become addicted to them. In a broad and future sense, regardless of the outcome, faith in the Virtual Civilization in its present formulation should be enhanced and corrected not to serve only virtuality users but the real-world habitants too.

The Civilizing Society of World Civilization in the Transformation in the 21st. Century

Today, our world is composed not only of societies that are part of actual civilizations, such as the Western, the Eastern, the Chinese, the Japanese, Islamic, Buddhist, the Hindu, and the African civilizations but also, we are enriched by the emergence of a new kind of society. The new, emerging societies include the Global society and the Virtual society. These societies are developing out of traditional societies, providing new ways of cross-cultural communication and political criticism. They are also laying the foundations of a new set of civilizations.

The founders of Global Civilization belong to the single global society; it is composed of an international elite group of the richest and most powerful people in the world. Among them are politicians, central bankers, chief executives of global corporations. They are called as the Global Elite. This single global society is partly defined by wealth, featuring the world’s millionaires and billionaires. Some of them work for large financial corporations. Others include successful entrepreneurs in the emerging markets of India, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Poland, Turkey and other lands.

The emerging global society of super-rich business people are practically becoming a nation composed of stateless citizens, buying houses outside their country of primary residence, for example. Members of the single global society may hold a globalist perspective and not contribute to the economic growth of their country of origin. Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over the policy-planning networks through financial support of foundations or positions with think tanks or policy-discussion groups, members of the single global society can exert significant power over the policy decisions of corporations and governments.

The single global society needs Globalizationoriented workers who will have the right knowledge sets, wisdom and skills to work in ever-changing international settings. At the same time, locallyoriented workers are afraid that they have obsolete knowledge sets or wisdom skills and if they do not adapt to the globalization challenge, they will be unemployed and deleted from the opportunities for better professional careers. In general parlance, the term Global Citizen may have much the same meaning as World Citizen or Cosmopolitan, but it also has additional, specialized meanings in differing contexts. Knowing to think and act beyond national borders is the essence of global citizenship.

Humanity is entering the Third Millennium in communication with almost the entire world, thanks to computer networks that connect increasingly accessible realms of information and knowledge. The individual becomes a part of – rather than apart from – the big picture. We can call this way of life a connected and layered existence. The Global Mind is guided by the principle “think globally, act locally.” In practice, the power of global corporations defeats local effort, which is too weak to face the challenges posed by global capital. The Global Mind operates in cyberspace and reaches all the places, which function on the Internet.

Virtual Society is based on Social Networking, that is on any site that allows people a place on the Internet from which to make connections, to create relationships, to communicate with participants, to build followings and to form networks of virtually connected people. Social Media is the media content (blog, video, e-book, slideshow, podcast, white paper, and so forth) that one uploads on the Internet for others to see, to respond to and to comment upon. Behind all content, and confronting those not so pleased and reluctant users, are large business-oriented social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and others which are competing for coverage and profits.

Societies have been bound in the past by mostly geographical territories, cultural influences, racial makeups, and religious beliefs. The emergence of the Internet and World Wide Web has eliminated the boundaries of traditional societies and opened the opportunity for the creation of networks of virtual societies leading to a new virtual civilization. One of the earliest known online communities was the WELL (Whole Earth Lectronic Link) started by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in 1985. WELL started as a dial-up bulletin board and email exchange system.

The appetite for reaching and communicating with likeminded people, sports fans, consumers, patients, students, individuals with the same or similar interests, citizens of another country, etc. has led to the creation of social networks having many different orientations (domains).

The Civilizing Culture of the Western Civilization

Culture is that set of values and symbols which controls patterns of human behavior. The new cultures of the 21st century (including the now emerging Global and Virtual Civilizations) have tremendous impact upon the traditional cultures, those that dominated our past centuries. People with one cultural orientation are now learning global and virtual cultures as they seek to fit into the main stream of society. For example, they are becoming fluent in the English language and learning to apply the use of the smartphone.

Global Civilization is mostly a derivative of Western Civilization. Hence it is well diversified, that is, it has become even more complex due to its international interactions. It embraces most of the globe’s nations, civilizations, and cultures. However, as global culture is mostly steered by the new set of international financiers, who look for bigger market places and, thus, for profits but do not care much about citizens, the mass of individuals are reduced to a labor force as a commodity.

Diversity and multiculturalism can be learned in the 21st . century. Diversity is established well only in the Western and Global Civilizations. Multiculturalism is practiced in Western Civilization but ultimately it leads to the development of a backlash among those elements of the population unable or unwilling to see the transition of a nation to a new stage of development. It appears that none of the contemporary civilizations may provide the optimal example of how diversity and multiculturalism should be approached. Multiculturalism is accepted by most sophisticated, educated individuals and seen as positive in theory. In practice, however, many others within existing countries oppose a significant influx of foreigners, as significant migration may challenge established customs and beliefs.

The term “virtual culture” means the electronization of the emerging information culture in network storage sites, which has been rapidly developing in the 21st century. In the last 50 years new media such as computers (software) and the Internet electronized and virtualized information culture. Virtual culture is not only about the electric transmission of words and images or pushing down messages via the mass media (“mass communications”), but it also invites men and women “to enlarge the human conversation by comprehending what others are saying.” The virtual (electronic) information process has triggered new values. These new values include connected-expected feedback patterns, rhythm, productivity, velocity, patience-less, technoism, cyber ethics, and informed optimization, etc. Of course, such a massive infusion of new cultural patterns arising from e-technologies also generates among people (netizens) new “electronic behavior.”

The Civilizing Infrastructure of the Western Civilization in the 21st. Century

New and emerging forms of electronic infrastructure have enabled the new, rising Global and Virtual Civilizations, since their infrastructures are strongly oriented to technology. For example, newspapers were mainly local in orientation and were printed on paper with the support of information technology. Today, with the emergence of Global Civilization, newspapers are also distributed electronically via the Internet.

The rising global infrastructure is changing the world civilization significantly in the 21st century. First, it now provides digital services which are in fact on-line. These services aid commerce and governments with edocuments, e-news, and e-books for worldwide dissemination.

The most important global infrastructure is the Internet of People since it coordinates all other global infrastructures. The Internet was operated as a classified project called the Arpanet, which was officially split into the Milinet and the Internet in 1983. Ever since the Internet has arisen as the public, global information infrastructure. Subsequently, the invention of browsers became the global information utility. Also important for global infrastructure has been the development of a new method of shipping goods across the oceans. This has involved the building of containers, which easily fit together and may be stacked onto ships. Combined with airliners that crisscross the planet, goods and services may easily reach most human beings.

The virtual infrastructure is composed of a grid of onlinedigital platforms and services with unlimited cyberspace, all organized in the cloud by service-providing vendors. Unfortunately, these cloud-oriented online services are very unreliable, and customers typically have only a vague idea where their information is being processed. Finally, the Internet of Things is a new big business, one which will create new billionaires. It presents the world with the possibility that everything may be connected electronically. However, unless the idea can be improved upon, the Internet of Things may also create those who lose by emphasizing this network too strongly, for it will be relatively insecure, capable of being hacked into by hucksters who operate locally, nationally, and from abroad.

Major Trends of the Global and Virtual Civilizations and a Timeline of the Future

Major trends can be summarized as fallows;

The invention of the Internet (1962-83) triggered the Wave of Globalization which eventually led to the Global Economy and the rise of a new form of secularism, the faith of business.

The global economy via the Internet resulted in the rapid growth, on a vast scale, of the outsourcing of manufacturing to countries offering cheap labor.

The end of the Cold War (1945-1991) triggered the quest for a new world order, one which led to a Clash of Civilizations.

The Internet allowed for the development of online communities, which eventually evolved in the major social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

The future of the world civilization is not as predictable as it once was.

Virtuality has led to the rise of what may be labelled the Virtual Common Mind, one shared among the einformation world elite.

It took millions of years for the human brain, and its mind, to evolve. But the virtual common mind has just now become active, present in the 21st century for the first time. It gives a huge advantage to those who know how to use it. Previously, the mind has been organized by universities, by accumulated wisdom recorded in publications stored in libraries. Access to facts, to mankind’s accumulated wisdom, was possible but very limited, due to the time needed for searching it out.