Scholte clearly has a strong grasp of the failings of many of the classical interpretations of what is meant by globalization. He also is quite aware of the pitfalls that exist in reactions against it as well as a full embrace of globalization. However, I must comment on a few problems I see with some of his references and frame work of thought. In his discussion of communication technologies, Scholte completely fails to make any mention of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's book, "How the World was One" on the development of communication technologies. While the book was written for a more "popular" audience, it does great justice to the topic by explaining how hard it was to develop the technologies for global communications. In general, I am not fond of Scholte's treatment of technological developments. He argues that the lack of high speed communication and high speed travel was what marked the period before globalization, or that the volume of communication was what makes the difference, or the breath and depth to which people interact with these technologies. While high speed-high capacity communication all over the globe is a truly new phenomena, it is firmly grounded in the gradual development of communication technologies over the last two centuries. I cast my time frame so wide because one must understand that in order to have a technology, there must be research into the physics before a product can be produced. Early studies of electricity, magnetic fields, and material sciences were what made the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, computer, and internet possible in the first place. I suppose that one could imagine a world in which communication technologies always developed wirelessly but it does not change the fundamental fact that technological processes are an evolutionary process with stops and starts. Thus, when each new technology was "globalized" it may not have had the deep impact that the internet has but it still was a facilitator bringing people in disparate parts of the world closer together.
Furthermore, Scholte argues that global ecological problems did not exist until recent times. This is a terribly naive and unnuanced view of the world and global ecology. While it is true that the scale of global ecological problems have grown exponentially, the problems have always been present in human society. The increase in the size of the human population and the development of new technologies have helped to facilitate the creation of the grave environmental times in which we find ourselves, but global climate change began with the start of the Industrial Revolution and the spread of industrial development has only made the problem worse. (I will not say wide spread because of the always defused nature of green house gas emissions) Loss of biodiversity has arguably been a fact of human existence since at least the last Ice Age and probably earlier. The cultivation of sugar in the West Indies led to the destruction of the rain forests on those islands and the loss of many species. While mahogany did not go extinct, it came quite close as a result of deforestation from sugar cultivation to meet a rather global demand for the substance and its products, and as a result of the unsustainable harvest of the wood for cabinet makers in America and Europe.
In general, I fully agree with Scholte that globalization as seen from the 1980s onward is quite distinct from anything else that proceeded it, but I would say that its antecedents have been with humanity sense at least the eighteenth century and some much earlier. I suppose my main point of contention is his interpretation of environmental and technological matters. A far more robust and thorough discussion of these developments is required if one is to better understand how the world became "global."
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