I love pizza and other Italian cuisine, so I naturally purchase a lot of food from Vocelli Pizza, a local pizza parlor.  I normally walk acroos the highway and physically place my order.  Recently, however, I have been placing delivery orders with my cellphone.  I have been having late basketball practices, and the dining hall is normally closed when I get out. 

Whenever I place my order over the phone, I always end up having to wait at least three minutes for the person on the other end of the phone to verify the ten percent University of Mary Washington student discount.  I could not understand why I had to wait everytime.  UMW is right across the street from the pizza shop, so why wouldn’t the workers know about the discount.  Whenever I physically go inside the store, the employees immediately uphold the discount.

While I was on hold yesterday, I thought the person taking my order should make a sign next to the phone, stating the discount.  Then the next time I a place an order the employee would not have to ask the manager to verify the discount.  However, when I proposed my idea to the person taking my order, I was informed that she was taking my order from a call center.  I immediately thought of globalization and Indian call centers.  Before she hung up the phone I made sure to ask her where the call center was located.  I was surprised to hear that its location was not over seas, but in Pittsburgh, PA. 

As a result of Vocelli Pizza in-sourcing its delivery orders, I am going to have to be on hold for at least a couple of minutes each time I place a delivery order.  I was on hold for seven minutes last time I placed my order.    

Recently, I cannot stop thinking that your class and culture place too much emphazise on technology.  Students in our class would rather IM each other than have a verbal conversation, even though they are sitting next to each other.  People seem to be consumed by technology and are starting to forget how to live without it.  Everyone I know owns a cellphone (expect for my dad and grandmother), I am the only person in our class without a laptop, my roommate is constantly playing video games, I am writing a blog at this moment…  Technology is everywhere and now it is connecting the world like never before. 

However, technology is also isolating people at the same time.  I could potentially never go to my globalization class because everything I need for the class is posted on this odd thing called a wiki.  I could stay in my room all day and only leave to eat.  My point is technology can replace humanity and should not consume to much of our lives.

I personally do not want to be spending the majority of my day in a small room, staring at a monitor for a huge portion of my life (the office).  However, many people think the ability to do just that, which is pretty much nothing, is an great advancement in human ingenuity.  Globalization is obviously going to increase people’s reliance on technology, and therefore reduce physical human interaction. 

Environmental and Natural Resource Economics by Tom Tietenberg

This source is primary, scholarly, and fact.

The book gives completely unbiased views and counter views. 

I was able to find this book via a catalog search.  I was unaware that it was a popular book.

According to http://www.aneki.com/academic.html India has 8,407  universities compared to America’s 5,758.  However, India only has 6,060,418 students compared the America’s 14,261,778 students.  So although India is becoming m0re and more educated, America is still producing more scholars.  However Indian universities maybe more demanding than American univerisities.  Globalization will increase job competition especially between Americans and Indians.  As Indians continue to create more unverisities and scholars, one Indian college graduate could conceiveably compete with two American graduates.

The majority of our class decisions elaborate on the economic and technological impacts of globalization, however we rarely discuss globalization’s impact on countries standard of living or happiness.  I think farther globalization would be rather useless for mankind if it does not improve the world’s standard of living.  According to http://thehappinessshow.com/HappiestCountries.htm the top five happiest countries are 1.Nigeria 2.Mexico 3.Venezuela 4.El Salvado  5.Puerto Rico, the degree of globalization in these countries is generally never talked about in class largely because globalization is minimal.  Although these countries are the happiest in the world, they are barely given any praise in class.  However countries like China and India are constantly being applauded for their recent economic growth.  Should we as a class and as a culture prefer wealth over happiness?  Is globalization increasing the world’s wealth and not its happiness?