{"id":2574,"date":"2016-12-01T09:40:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T08:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/?p=2574"},"modified":"2016-12-01T14:12:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T13:12:43","slug":"globalization-robots-and-a-future-scenario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/2016\/12\/01\/globalization-robots-and-a-future-scenario\/","title":{"rendered":"Globalization, Robots and a Future Scenario"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"robot\"
pixabay.com\/ergoneon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We all understand globalization<\/strong> as the free movement of goods, ideas and people. Buying Chinese products in European stores, working together with foreign colleagues, and taking an online-course from a physically distant university are all results of globalization<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Richard Baldwin, a Geneva-based economist, sees all these results as a consequence of a series of waves of globalization<\/strong>, namely the so called unbundlings. <\/em>In his new book The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalisation <\/em>Mr. Baldwin unfolds the three-cascading-constraints narrative<\/a>: the unbundling of goods (1), ideas (2), and people (3).<\/p>\n

According to the narrative, globalization<\/strong>\u2019s first acceleration started with the Industrial Revolution, when the cost of moving goods fell. In other words, while before (in a pre-globalized context), the world economy<\/strong> was constrained by distance and the majority of trade happened at a village level, now roads, trains, ships and planes allowed people to move goods across borders.<\/p>\n

Whereas shipping got cheaper, the costs of moving ideas and people remained high\u2026 until the next acceleration. Mr. Baldwin calls it the \u2018second unbundling\u2019, and refers to the 1990s, when the revolution of information and communication technology happened. The IT revolution radically changed the way we communicate and made it easy and affordable to move ideas across borders. In essence, while before the \u2018second unbundling\u2019 one had to travel far to capture and learn relevant know-how, then today all information is just \u2018a click away\u2019.<\/p>\n

Now, with the constraints of goods and ideas unbundled, what about the third wave of \u2018unbundling\u2019 people? Naturally, both industrial and IT revolution made the movement of people much easier, yet we can still hardly speak about free and low-cost movement of people. Especially given the continuously unfolding political resistance to migration, many still remain \u2018stuck\u2019 home.<\/p>\n

In his three-cascading-constraints narrative, Richard Baldwin argues that the next radical change in globalization<\/strong> is still to come and that it will be most likely driven by technology. But Mr. Baldwin doesn\u2019t predict a cheaper movement of people, he is rather speaking about work being physically unbundled from workers.<\/p>\n

How? Telerobotics<\/a> and telepresence<\/a> seem to be the answer.<\/p>\n

Telerobotics<\/strong> refers to a robot, which is remotely controlled by a human on the other end. So for example, a qualified engineer, sitting in his office in country X, can do a job in country Y by means of steering a robot. Sounds like virtual migration<\/strong>, doesn\u2019t it? Telepresence<\/strong> will do similar tasks to telerobotics<\/strong>, but instead of \u2018teleporting\u2019 manual tasks, it will \u2018teleport\u2019 brainwork. Indeed, different teleconferencing technologies already do that, yet telepresence<\/strong> intends to create the ultimate experience, making it feel like the person on the screen is actually in the room. As Mr. Baldwin puts it<\/a>, \u2018telerobotics <\/strong>will globalize competition for many types of manual work, while\u00a0telepresence will globalize many types of \u201cwhite collar\u201d or professional brainwork\u2019.<\/p>\n

Remote-controlled robots and life-like experiences of telecommunication? Sounds like science fiction? \u2026 or rather like a possible future<\/strong> scenario of globalization<\/strong>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all understand globalization as the free movement of goods, ideas and people. Buying Chinese products in European stores, working together with foreign colleagues, and taking an online-course from a physically distant university are all results of globalization. Richard Baldwin, a Geneva-based economist, sees all these results as a consequence of a series of waves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18330],"tags":[25739,44741,782,96639,96638,96640,1499],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-views-and-news-about-expatriates","tag-future","tag-global-mobility","tag-globalization","tag-telepresence","tag-telerobotics","tag-virtual-migration","tag-world-economy","megacategoria-mc-leadership-and-people-management"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2574"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/expatriatus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}