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1、What we have, if not need, to know to be “in” in this changing world-Information explosion and our life paceIn terms of both time and spatial dimensions, we live in a global village in an information age with many neighbors different from us in ideology, cultural backgrounds, languages, religious be
2、liefs and ethnic origins. According to some sociologists and economists, some countries in the world have already entered into so-called “post-industrial society”, the symbols of which are the wide use of information technology as represented by digital control of our work and life arranged by compu
3、ters. Most of us feel that we cant live and work, if not smoothly, without computers to aid us. Industrialization has changed much of our world in the past and computerization has been changing our world beyond our imagination. Nobody knows if we are heading for heaven or hell and if what we have be
4、en experiencing is boon or otherwise. People tend to be fed with more and more information about almost everything around them and they have to keep up with what is going on “around” them, something that has happened thousand miles away in the other corner of the world. With the new development of i
5、nformation technology (cyber revolution, virtual world and digital control), we can know something the instant it happens thousand miles away via live broadcast by major mass media tycoons like CNN, Reuters, BBC, AP (the Associated Press), UPI (the United Press International), etc either by TV or th
6、rough internet. Indeed, we are living in a shrinking world. Just as Daniel Bell pointed out, our sense of space and time have been altered by supersonic jet planes like Concord and jumbo jets like Boeing 747 or A 380. Because of jet lag, a person can leave Beijing at 9 am local time and arrive at Lo
7、ndon Heathrow 11 am local time or at LA (Los Angeles) at 6 early morning of the same day. In the former case, with allowance of flight time, you feel two hours late, you are in a city so remote that it would take your ancestors about three months to get there by ship or at least three weeks by train
8、. In the latter case, you have gained many hours back in your life. This is new concept of space and time caused by the invention of jet-planes. We can no long have the sense of “getting home” as so sentimentally expressed by John Denvers song named “Country road, take me home”. We dont have to be s
9、o sentimental or nostalgia because we are in a different world that our previous generations have never experienced or even imagined. Then what do we have to know or learn to be “in” so that we will not be regarded as “outcast”, “hermits” by those fads?Politically and by nature, this world has not c
10、hanged too much from what it was about 100 years ago. That is to say, this world is still a world in which the maxim “Might is right” rules although who is big or small, who is strong or weak has changed a lot. America is “up and big”, Britain is gone as an extinct empire. Japan and Germany are back
11、 as economic giants and China is “up and about” again after 150 years silence like a sleeping lion. India is an elephant for rebirth with its great potentials. Russia, a polar bear, is making its way heavily to an “oasis” for survival. Iran is trying to revitalize its old empire (the Persian Empire)
12、 by challenging the superpower with oil, or maybe with nuclear weapons. There is an international organization of sovereign states called the United Nations which has about nearly 200 member states with an Asian of Korean origins called Bung Kee Won as its secretary-general as of January 2007. Under
13、 the UN, there is an authoritative body called “the Security Council” that is in charge of global security issues and issues that concern the vital interests of human beings at a global level. There are 15 members in the Council with Britain, China, France, Russia and the USA as permanent ones holdi
14、ng a veto power over important issues concerning world affairs. We now know four countries (Japan, Germany, Brazil and India) seeking permanent seats in the Council, which is opposed by “Unity for Consensus” alliance headed by Italy and Pakistan. Basically, this world is still a world of a few big p
15、owers or in the terms of IR relations, of hegemonic stability system. G-8 is a group of eight most industrialized, if not the richest, countries on earth whose combined GDP accounts for 70% of the global total which was registered at about USD 36,000 billion in 2006. In global politics, people need
16、also to know something about such organizations of regional or global influence or significance as the EU, AU, ASEAN, OAS, CIS, UAS, OIS, SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), Non-alignment Movement (NAM), etc. People with special interest in politics, either domestic or foreign, should have some basic understanding of some major events, past or recent, that may have produced some impact on our future world. Such events, among many others, include, since WWII u
