💭 The world is spiky

And technology made it thus.

Members-only post which is open access.

More than a decade ago, Thomas Friedman argued that the world was flat: driven by communications technologies, globalisation helped create a perfect marketplace, flattening the economic playing field. Friedman emphasised the force of technology as the key driver of this flattening world. 

He was wrong.

Far from flattening the world, the technologies he refers to have fractalised it. Location matters. Distance is very much alive. 

I’ve been thinking about this process of fractalisation.

The ongoing technology decoupling between China and the US is one example. This is driven by the complex considerations of geostrategic competition between China and America in a world where existing institutions, like the G7 or UN, have less impact. 

Conscious decoupling

This week alone, we learnt that the Chinese government itself is taking steps to weed the US tech out of its systems. In a move which is likely to be partly driven by retaliation for the trade sanctions…