Lianzhuang Qu Learning Log
How did we work it out? Although it is not a interesting a story, but it is through this process that I learned a lot of things.
For this course our group chose “Global village” as our topic. On the first sight, it was an exciting one, because we thought we could use our imagination to create what will the world look like in 2020: a world with robots everywhere, convenient space transportation for common people, or the disappearance of poverty. But as we approached, we got to this topic was too broad for to analyze driving forces we have to understand almost every aspect the current world including economy, technology, policy, and culture. In fact it was too board, so we decided to focus on two issues which were economy and technology. I was in the charge of economical things. I found that the globalization of economy depends on five activities: international investment, international finance, international production, regionalization of economy, international trade. In order to explain the relationships of these things with globalization, I had to have a general idea of micro-economy and macro-economy. This is because international trade and international production which is also viewed as result of the international trade mainly deal with micro-economy for they aim at optimization of resources and maximization of profit. The popular theory for the existence of international trade is comparative advantage theory which was first described by Robert Torrens in 1815. While international investment and international finance concentrate on currency, exchange rate, and barriers such as quotes, tariff. So it is necessary for me to understand macro-economy to explain these two issues. Here, I have to admit that I learned a lot about economy due to our topic. The most challenging part was how decided the relationships among all factors and choosing the high leverages to decide scenarios. I believe it is this part gives us insight into the possible outcome of the world in 2020, should it be a village as described by McLuhan, or a world of polars or the revival of nationalisim. I draw a diagram to show the knowledge system to understand the globalization.
