Economic contagion has become a new buzz-word in financial sectors, for example. The Asian ‘crisis’ of 1997 quickly spread around the Pacific Asia region from Thailand, to South Korea, and on to
Japan, and the ramifications of the collapse had a rapid and tangible impact on economies all across the world to varying degrees. But this ‘shrinking’ appears to be permeating all spheres of human activity. Twenty-four-hour news providers, such as CNN and the BBC, broadcast unfolding events, such as the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, in real time to people’s homes and offices across the planet and this prompts an instant outpouring of relief donations from around the globe. Carbon dioxide emissions in the USA or China have a direct impact on small island states as sea level rises and cyclone events become more common in localities such as Grenada in the Caribbean or Niue in the Pacific. Feasibly, then, we could talk of increased cultural, social, environmental and political contagion given the new fluidity of global flows. What is for sure is that the way that many of us experience the world is shifting in sometimes dizzying ways and that a revolution in technologies of interaction has played a central role in this (see Table 1.1).