Here’s a question with an ecological flavour: does global interconnectivity lead to standardization or diversification? If culture and ideas can flow freely and over great distances around the earth, does everything become a homogenous mirroring of the most powerful cultural influences (i.e. Hollywood, McDonalds and Abercrombie and Fitch) or does it allow the flowering of many cultural niches?

There certainly seems to be lots of concern about homogenization, and pleny of international McDonalds franchises and Palestinian kids wearing Linkin Park tshirts to back up that theory. On the other hand, their is plenty of anecdotal evidence and on-line theorizing that the internet in particular has allowed people to ultra-diversify: lots of people now identify with little subgenres that didn’t have the critical mass to sustain themselves in whitebread towns in America but can now connect with each other on line.

Is globalization diversifying America and Americanizing everybody else?

Am I confusing two different things with “globalization”? Are the two ends of the spectrum maybe being driven by two different “globalist” forces? Is it transnational corporate marketing and capatilism generally vs. individual on-line expression?