The diffusion of ideas and technological impacts that have taken place globally.

             Globalization as a phenomenon of economic and cultural connectivity has been growing for centuries, but the current form is of a fundamentally different order (Smith and Doyle 2002). The speed of communication, the complexity and size of the networks involved and the huge volume of trade, interaction and risks involved make up the current and peculiar form. The diffusion of ideas, practices and technologies that occurs within is more than internationalization, universalization, modernization and westernization. Anthony Giddens (1990 as qtd in Smith and Doyle) described today's globalization as "the intensification of worldwide social relations, which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa." It has changed the way geography has been traditionally understood and how localness has been experienced. The new framework is a spread and connectedness of production, communication and technologies across the world through the interlacing of economic and cultural activity. Its unique feature is the momentum and power of the change involved - the interaction of extraordinary technological innovation and its worldwide reach capability (Hutton and Giddens 2001 as qtd in Smith and Doyle). Gigantic and unprecedented developments in the life sciences, digital technology and such like, created vast and new production and exchange possibilities. Complementing them are innovations, like the internet, which have made access to information and other resources throughout the world possible as well as coordinate activities in real time (Smith and Doyle). It is a global shift, or one wherein the world is being moulded by economic and technological forces into a shared economic and political arena (Held 1999). .

             II. The relationship of these groups globally as it relates to ideas, events, overall social climate, and, most importantly, commerce.