Thinking and Acting Globally





This IAE-pedia document was initially simultaneously published in the iae-Pedia and as an IAE Blog. (See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/thinking-and-acting-globally.html.) Subsequently, this IAE-pedia version has has been considerably expanded.


 * It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… (Charles Dickens; A Tale of Two Cities, 1895.)

Introduction
I think of myself as a citizen of my local community (Eugene-Springfield), my county (Lane), my state (Oregon), my country (U.S.), and my world (Gaia). I am interested in how well “my” regions are doing, and what I can do to help improve the quality of life of the people in each of these regions. My approach is through helping to improve informal and formal education.

The local, county, state, national, and global media I read and view tend to over-emphasize the negative in terms of how well these various regions are doing. I describe this as overly focusing on the possibility that, “We are going to hell in a hand-basket.”

Fortunately, there are many people who do broad-scale, long-term analysis and produce evidence that humanity actually is making a great deal of progress. As an example, Steven Pinker’s most recent book is titled, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Quoting from http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1455883115:

We’ve all asked, “What is the world coming to?” But we seldom ask, “How bad was the world in the past?” In this startling new book, the bestselling cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the world of the past was much worse. In fact, we may be living in the most peaceable era yet.

…

Thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

Some Worldwide Examples of Progress
Recently, while planning a book-writing project, I started thinking about how well the world is doing. I made an “off the top of my head” list of some of the worldwide efforts to improve the world, and then I spent quite a bit of time using the Web to find more examples and more details. There are a great many international agencies and organizations working to improve our world and our quality of life. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_organization.

The following is a representative sample of what I found. You may not agree with all of these examples, or with my take about what is going on, but in total I feel they paint a quite positive picture. With most of these I have included links where you can find more information.

The World is Becoming “Smaller” and “Flatter”
We have made steady progress toward improving worldwide communication. For example, see http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm and http://www.statisticbrain.com/social-networking-statistics/.

Also see Thomas Friedman’s excellent book about the world growing flatter at http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/the-world-is-flat. Telecommuting has become worldwide, with an increasing number of people working nationally and internationally from their homes or local telecommunication centers.

An October 12, 2012 article available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/cell-phones-world-subscribers-six-billion_n_1957173.html is titled, World Has About 6 Billion Cell Phone Subscribers, According To U.N. Telecom Agency Report. Wow! Six billion cell phones in a world of seven million people. And, we have the technology and international agreements that allow communication among these cell phone owners. In addition, quoting from the article:


 * The Geneva-based agency says 2.3 billion people–or about one in three of the world's 7 billion inhabitants–were Internet users by the end of 2011, but there's a strong disparity between rich and developing countries.


 * ITU says 70 percent of people who use the Internet live in wealthier, industrialized countries, compared with 24 percent who live in poorer, developing nations.

A 9/4/2013 article in Campus Technology in that in the year 2013 there will be more than a billion smart phones sold worldwide.See http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/09/05/smart-phones-to-surpass-1-billion-units-this-year.aspx?=CT21.

There are a variety of search engines that help people find material on the Web. Google has put substantial resources into developing language translation software and making it available free. See http://translate.google.com/about/ for a list of the 71 languages supported by the Google system. Also see http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/google-translate-has-ambitious-goals-for-machine-translation-a-921646.html for an 9/13/2013 article from Spiegel International on Google's language translation project.

The following article discusses efforts to keep the web as a worldwide effort and resource:


 * Worth, Dan (10/7/2013). Google, Facebook and government back Sir Tim Berners-Lee mission to bring web to the world. Retrieved 10/10 2013 from http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2299028/google-facebook-and-government-back-sir-tim-berners-lee-mission-to-bring-web-to-the-world.

Quoting from the article:


 * The Alliance for Affordable Internet, founded by Berners-Lee, will work with governments in Asia and Africa to try and remove unnecessary regulations and anti-competitive policies to make it easier for internet infrastructure to be installed. Issues around taxes and state telecoms monopolies were also cited as barriers to getting better web access.


 * Berners-Lee said tackling these issues was vital to help the internet spread and empower more people in remote locations. He cited an example in Mozambique where a study showed using 1GB of data can cost over two months' wages.

We also have made steady progress in air transportation. See http://web.mit.edu/airlines/analysis/analysis_airline_industry.html and http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR. Just think about the types of international agreements that it takes to have such an extensive and viable international airline transportation system.

There is considerable international collaboration in space travel and exploration. See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html#.UifBJ7x1EUU and http://www.globalspaceexploration.org/.

We have long had many international amateur and professional sports competitions. See http://www.theworldgames.org/ and http://www.olympic.org/olympic-games.

We have many international amateur competitions and camps in areas such as music, dance, math, computer programming, science, and so on. See, for example, http://www.trycomputing.org/inspire/computing-student-opportunities.

Creative Commons and Free Online Reference Materials 
The Web is a very large and rapidly growing world library. See statistical data at http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.

The Wikipedia is a superb example of a worldwide effort to make information available free, and in many different languages. The website http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page indicates that currently the Wikipedia contains a total of more than 29 million articles in 287 languages. These are available under a Creative Commons license. Learn more about Creative Commons at http://creativecommons.org/. Quoting from that site: “Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.”

Google Earth is another excellent example. The website http://www.google.com/earth/index.html is titled Get the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

All of the books, newsletters, and other materials created for Information Age Education (IAE) are made available free to the world using a Creative Commons license.

There are a number of groups dedicated to substantially increasing the amount of free material available on the Web. The article “Half of 2011 Papers Now Free to Read” is available at http://www.nature.com/news/half-of-2011-papers-now-free-to-read-1.13577. It discusses progress on the movement to make research articles available free. See also http://iae-pedia.org/Open_Source_Textbooks, http://iae-pedia.org/Open_Content_Libraries, and http://www.doaj.org/. The latter site is the directory of Open Access Journals. More than 5,000 journals are available free on the Web.

TED Talks
There are now about 1,500 Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) videos posted on the Web at http://www.ted.com/pages/about. These provide information about projects and ideas developing throughout the world. The TED talks project is an excellent example of worldwide sharing of ideas and activities that address challenging problems. Quoting from the website:

TED Talks began as a simple attempt to share what happens at the TED Conference with the world. Under the moniker "ideas worth spreading," talks were released online and rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. Indeed, the reaction was so enthusiastic that the entire TED website has been reengineered around TED Talks, with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world's most inspiring voices. As of November 2012, TED Talks have been viewed more than one billion times.

The TED Open Translation Project brings TED Talks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, interactive transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. We launched the project with 300 translations, 40 languages and 200 volunteer translators; now, there are more than 45,000 completed translations from our thousands-strong community. It's an ambitious project that radically enhances the accessibility of the talks—for the hearing-impaired, for those who speak English as a second language, for search engines (which can now index the full transcript of a talk), and of course for the vast audience of non-English speakers worldwide.

Disease and Medicine 
We have wiped out smallpox, are close to eliminating polio, have greatly reduced the incidence of measles, and have made many other major strides toward improving world health care. We are now taking a global approach to research and the implementation of this research helps in dealing with a variety of health problems. See http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/healthcare/who.htm.

The world is struggling with AIDS. Learn about AIDS and children at http://newsletter.childrenandaids.org/. The United Nations agency UNICEF takes a worldwide approach to this and other problems faced by children. Quoting from http://www.unicef.org/about/structure/index.html: “With its strong presence in 190 countries, UNICEF is the world's leading advocate for children.”

We have many international “relief” organizations such as the International Red Cross, and a great many Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) that work internationally. We make worldwide efforts to combat poverty. See http://www.worldbank.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization.

World Education 
We have a Universal Declaration of Human rights and a United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The world strongly supports the educational right of children. See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx. In some sense, we are developing an increased worldwide level morality when it comes to the “rights” of children. See http://i-a-e.org/downloads/doc_download/251-consciousness-and-morality-recent-research-developments.html.

We have many international educational opportunities at both the precollege and higher education levels. See http://www.ets.org/toefl and http://www.afs.org/afs-and-exchange-programs/. Large numbers of students travel to other countries to obtain part of their education.

The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are bringing low or no cost high quality educational opportunities to people throughout the world. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/supersized-online-courses-moocs.html. The following article provides information about worldwide expansion of MOOCs:


 * Lewin, Tamar (10/31/2013). U.S. Teams Up With Operator of Online Courses to Plan a Global Network. The New York Times. Retrieved 11/1/2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/education/us-plans-global-network-of-free-online-courses.html?_r=1&. Quoting from the article:


 * Coursera, a California-based venture that has enrolled five million students in its free online courses, announced on Thursday a partnership with the United States government to create “learning hubs” around the world where students can go to get Internet access to free courses supplemented by weekly in-person class discussions with local teachers or facilitators.


 * The learning hubs represent a new stage in the evolution of “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, and address two issues: the lack of reliable Internet access in some countries, and the growing conviction that students do better if they can discuss course materials, and meet at least occasionally with a teacher or facilitator.


 * Coursera is joining forces with the State Department’s MOOC Camp Initiative, now operating in 40 countries — about half using Coursera courses, and the other half courses from such providers as edX and Open Yale, whose courses are also available free on the Internet. But beyond having its courses used, Coursera is taking an active role in the project.


 * Both Coursera, the largest MOOC provider, and edX, the nonprofit Harvard-M.I.T. venture that is the second largest, began two years ago by offering wholly online courses, but are now working with universities to offer blended, or hybrid, courses. Both are also working with a growing number of overseas partners. including universities in Australia, Switzerland, China and elsewhere, sometimes with courses offered in languages other than English.


 * Coursera, which now has 100 university partners, has developed a network of translators who are making the materials in some courses available in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Kazakh, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Ukrainian.

There are many international conferences and academic meetings. A recent Google search on international conferences produced about 245 million hits. See, for example, http://www.conferencealerts.com.

As the countries throughout the world work to improve their educational systems, they often draw on ideas of what seems to be working well in other countries and upon results from international assessments. As an example, the United States has undertaken a large Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative. One of the CCSS areas is English Language Arts. Quoting from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy:


 * The present work, led by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association (NGA), builds on the foundation laid by states in their decades-long work on crafting high-quality education standards. The Standards also draw on the most important international models as well as research and input from numerous sources, including state departments of education, scholars, assessment developers, professional organizations, educators from kindergarten through college, and parents, students, and other members of the public. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Law 
We have an International Court of Justice, which is part of the United Nations. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice. Through this court and other components of the United Nations we address issues of chemical weapons, genocide, apartheid, and crimes against humanity at a worldwide level. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity.

We have the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and other vehicles to deal with international crime in an international manner. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpol.

We have the Law of the Sea (see http://www.un.org/depts/los/index.htm) and have developed mechanisms to help deal with fresh water rights conflicts between nations (see http://www.internationalwaterlaw.org/).

Commerce</Center>
We have extensive and growing worldwide businesses and world trade. We have international stock markets, commodity markets, and currency exchanges. See http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/whatis_e.htm. We have a World Bank with a motto, “Working for a world free of poverty.” See http://www.worldbank.org/.

We have had a “green” revolution that led to substantial increases in food production. The movement of food between countries is a very large international business. See http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/greenrevolution.htm.

Employment</Center>
Unemployment and under employment are a problem in many countries. The employment in any particular country is affected by the worldwide economy and by the economy of its trading partners.

In addition, technological progress in the development of robots of increasing physical and mental capabilities is creating more and more competition for human workers. For more information on this topic, see:


 * Kang, C. (6/6/2013). New Robots in the Workplace: Job Creators or Job Terminators. The Washington Post. Retrieved 3/10/2013 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-robots-in-the-workplace-job-creators-or-job-terminators/2013/03/06/a80b8f34-746c-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html. Quoting from the article:


 * Today’s robots can do far more than their primitive, single-task ancestors. And there is a broad debate among economists, labor experts and companies over whether the trend will add good-paying jobs to the economy by helping firms run more efficiently or simply leave human workers out in the cold.


 * “We’ve reached a tipping point in robotics,” said Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The possibility is to run a factory, she added, “all while you are sleeping.”

One of the outcomes that has emerged in recent years is that in many countries, the rich get richer and the poor make little progress in becoming less poor.

This situation is contributing to civil strife and even civil war in a number of countries. These country-specific problems affect the whole world.

We have long had and still have migrant workers. We also now have many workers who telecommute across national borders. So, there is growing international competition for jobs, and growing problems of facilitating and regulating such employment.

Perhaps the good news is that the widespread recognition of these problems. For example, the G20 is an international organization with the purpose/focus of "Bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-20_major_economies. Collectively, the G-20 economies account for approximately 80 percent of the gross world product (GWP), 80 percent of world trade (including EU intra-trade), and two-thirds of the world population.

Sustainability and the Environment </Center>
We are making worldwide efforts to address issues such as sustainability, over-population, global warming and other aspects of climate, air pollution, ocean pollution, the ozone layer, the growing problem of not enough fresh water, and so on. See http://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/oi.nsf/8bb15fe43a5fb81788256b58005ff079/398761d6c3c7184988256fc40078499b!OpenDocument.

Renewable energy has become a global topic for research and development. See http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/06/steady-but-modest-progress-found-on-sustainable-energy-for-all.

Hans Rosling has given a number of TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design talks. Quoting from the blurb about his presentation on global population growth at http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html:


 * The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years—and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).


 * In Hans Rosling’s hands, data sings. Global trends in health and economics come to vivid life. And the big picture of global development—with some surprisingly good news—snaps into sharp focus. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Sharing Research Worldwide</Center>
A large amount the published research is available free. The percentage of research being made available free or at quite modest cost is growing.

See the Directory of Open Access Journals. Quoting from this Website accessed 9/19/2013:


 * Welcome to the Directory of Open Access Journals. This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 9,922 journals in the directory. Currently 5,573 journals are searchable at article level. As of today 1,510,652 articles from 120 countries are included in the DOAJ service.

Grens, Kerry )9/12/2013). U.S. Drops in Share of Publications. The Scientist. Retrieved 9/17/2013 from http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/37469/title/U-S--Drops-in-Share-of-Publications/.

Scientific research and publication are a worldwide activity. Quoting from the Grens article:


 * U.S. researchers continue to produce plenty of academic papers—to the tune of around 350,000 each year, making up nearly 28 percent of the world's share of manuscripts indexed in Thomson Reuters's Web of Science. No other individual country comes close; the entire European Union comprises another 35.5 percent of the pie. But according to Thomson Reuters's latest analysis of G20 countries, released this month, those percentages have been sliding in recent years—despite the absolute numbers of papers holding steady—thanks to upticks in output from China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea, among others.


 * “In general, world shares for nations with mature scientific enterprises have declined and those of developing nations have risen,” the authors wrote in their report. China, for instance, has surged from producing around 6 percent of the world's scientific papers in 2003 to 14 percent in 2012.

The quote given above mentions Reuters's Web of Science. Quoting on 9/19/2013 from http://thomsonreuters.com/web-of-science/:


 * Web of Science® provides researchers, administrators, faculty, and students with quick, powerful access to the world's leading citation databases. Authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 12,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals [spanning more than 250 disciplines] and over 150,000 conference proceedings. You'll find current and retrospective coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage to 1900.

Material Not Yet Integrated Into Above List
Ahoy Dave,

Suggestion: Add a section on population to your "Thinking and Acting Globally" blog.

Perhaps begin with information about

Population Reference Bureau http://www.prb.org/

And what say a section on carbon footprint?

Carbon Footprint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint

Cool Carbon Footprint Calculator http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/carboncalculator

Bob & George bob@geekclan.com

Final Remarks
As I re-read the list of examples given above, my spirits are buoyed by the progress that has occurred toward addressing worldwide problems and issues. We have a long way to go, but we have shown that progress is possible.

Some problems are best dealt with at a local level, some at a county or regional level, some at a state level, some at a national level, and some at a global level. Many problems quite complex and cut across some or all of these levels. Think about what you are doing to help yourself, your students, and your colleagues to develop perspectives and insights that cut across all levels. Pay special attention to things you can do to help prepare your students for adult life in a complex, rapidly changing world that is facing and dealing with many complex, wide-scale problems.

Suggested Readings from IAE and Other Publications

 * You can use Google to search all of the IAE publications. [Click here to begin]. Then click in the IAE Search box that is provided, insert your search terms, and click on the Search button.


 * Click here to search the entire collection of IAE Blog entries.


 * Here are some examples of publications that might interest you:

40th anniversary of the cell phone. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/40th-anniversary-of-the-cell-phone.html.

Deep insights into problems with our educational system. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/deep-insights-into-problems-with-our-educational-system.html.

Learning for one's possible futures. See http://i-a-e.org/newsletters/IAE-Newsletter-2009-14.html.

Progress in developing better rechargeable batteries. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/progress-in-developing-better-rechargeable-batteries.html.

Sister Cities International. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Cities_International. Quoting from the site:


 * Sister Cities International is a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network that creates and strengthens partnerships between communities in the United States and those in other countries, particularly through the establishment of "sister cities". More than 2,000 cities, states and counties are partnered in 136 countries around the world. The organization "strives to build global cooperation at the municipal level, promote cultural understanding and stimulate economic development".

Some grand global challenges. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/some-grand-global-challenges.html.

Supersized online courses (MOOCs). See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/supersized-online-courses-moocs.html.

What the future is bringing us. See http://iae-pedia.org/What_the_Future_is_Bringing_Us.

World problems identified by B.F. Skinner in 1971. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/world-problems-identified-by-b-f-skinner-in-1971.html.

Author
This IAE-pedia entry was written by David Moursund.