All connected now : life in the first global civilization /

Anderson goes beyond the narrow economic focus common to most books about globalization to describe four kinds of global change: economic, political, cultural, and biological. These are all accelerating as they are driven by the increasing mobility of symbols, goods, people, and nonhuman life forms. This process of globalization is viewed as having begun eons ago and is inseparable from human evolution. Anderson describes how we are entering an "age of open systems" as systems of all kinds--organizations, nations, and ecosystems--change in similar ways. Boundaries around systems are penetrated, challenged, renegotiated, and relocated. Systems that were once relatively isolated develop new connections and linkages to other systems. This globalizing world is radically "uncentralized" even though people and societies are richly interconnected. The author reexamines a perspective of globalization from things that are known and from things that are just being discovered, enabling us to see how we came to the place we are in now. Globalization is advanced by antiglobalization movements, while global-scale problems such as climate draw people together into the first global civilization. All levels and collections. M. Klatte Eastern Kentucky University