Not only the world turns faster, it also seems smaller. What happens in a distant land can rebound near us in unpredictable ways. Economic crises initiated in Mexico, Greece or Argentina have put in check the global economy in recent decades. The globalized planet today faces a lot of new -and old- challenges, some too complex: excessive financial volatility, global warming, the crisis of the current energy matrix, the threat of nuclear proliferation, communicable diseases, regrowth of nationalisms… To all this is, one can add illicit international trade, arms and people trafficking and drug trafficking, which generate powerful parallel economies plagued by crime and violence. The emergence of new terrorist, tribal and cybernetic models, formed by a kind of army of enraged multinational enemies of the economic powers that promoted globalization, end up setting the stage for a surprising and uncertain epochal change, whose effects are multiplied, amplified and made more complex by technologies.
It is a new state of affairs where the countries that led international society in the twentieth century are forced to make room for and even to share their leadership to a strong and resolute group of nations, mostly Asian, led by China and, more recently, by India.
In this new order, humanity faces, for the second time in history (since the demographic explosion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) the possibility that millions of people living in poverty would move up to the social ladder to reach middle class status. In this context, the unprecedented level of connectivity around the globe affects all fields of life and human relationships. The same technological changes transform mass society, typical of the twentieth century, into a society of crowds or communities made up of citizens, consumers and individuals who use these technologies in unprecedented ways. It does not seem unreasonable that this new economy contributes and fertilizes the political ideology of this new era, marked by the prominence of the crowds, workers, consumers, citizens.
