2005 | 2010 | 2016a | |
Africa | 2% | 10% | 25% |
Americas | 36% | 49% | 65% |
Arab States | 8% | 26% | 42% |
Asia and Pacific | 9% | 23% | 42% |
Commonwealth of Independent States |
10% |
34% |
67% |
Europe | 46% | 67% | 79% |
a Estimate. Source: International Telecommunication Union. |
Globalization or is the trend of increasing interaction between people or companies on a worldwide scale due to advances in transportation and communication technology, normally beginning with the steamship and the telegraph in the early to mid-1800s. With increased interactions between nation-states and individuals came the growth of international trade, ideas, and culture. Globalization is primarily an economic process of integration that has social and cultural aspects, but and diplomacy are also large parts of the history of globalization.
Economically, globalization involves goods and services, and the economic resources of capital, technology, and data. The steam locomotive, steamship, jet engine, and container ships are some of the advances in the means of transport while the rise of the telegraph and its modern offspring, the Internet and mobile phones show development in telecommunications infrastructure. All of these improvements have been major factors in globalization and have generated further interdependence of economic and cultural activities.
Though many scholars place the origins of globalization in modern times, others trace its history long before the European Age of Discovery and voyages to the New World, some even to the third millennium BC. Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the connectivity of the world's economies and cultures grew very quickly. The term globalization is recent, only establishing its current meaning in the 1970s.