The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Digital globalization and its challenges

2023-06-01T09:54:32.859Z

Highlights: The internet of the XXI century is a new "geographical-virtual", supranational space. 44 countries already offer digital nomad visas to receive remote workers. The number of digital nomads grew 130% from the moment the Covid-19 pandemic began. These people occupy an increasingly influential place in trends in production, work and trade. They are "wavemakers". And rules and policies, the organization of companies, culture and infrastructure must already provide for how to coexist with the phenomenon.


Digital globalization and its challenges


The globalization of these days is no longer (as Richard Baldwin explains) that of companies that ship their products on ships, but – now – that of people becoming global in their lives.

What is possible – as Olivier Marchon explains – because the internet of the XXI century (which is very different from the previous one), in which 5,000 million people transit, is a new "geographical-virtual", supranational space, in which – no matter from what place and contacting us by affinities – we learn, assist each other, discuss, work, hire, think, entertain ourselves. It is a new gigantic continent delocalized. A new digital geography according to "who" we are with and no longer "where" we are.

The world is less and less a platform of collectives (nations, races, languages) and more and more a set of links between different people (as Borges claimed).

An example is the consolidation of areas in which – more than developed or underdeveloped countries – developed or underdeveloped people prevail: the enclaves that multinationals and their value ecosystems generate in poor countries and the ghettos that many immigrants create in rich countries are a testimony. Which, in addition, also creates friction.

Within that new great continent emerges a new category: digital nomads. People with multiple systemic mobility who live without a permanent geographical location and move, through the internet, for their jobs, social life or personal life.

They are groups that undergo a profound transformation, an unprecedented anthropological mutation: they change the sedentary lifestyle (which man adopted ten thousand years ago in the Middle East favoring the beginning of civilization) for the new digital nomadism.

In the US, the number of digital nomads grew 130% from the moment the Covid-19 pandemic began (according to MBO Partners). What is significant is that these digital nomads have a hyper-education: 59% have a college degree or higher (compared to 35% of American adults) and 26% have an advanced degree (compared to 13% of American adults).

The phenomenon is expanding worldwide: 44 countries already offer digital nomad visas to receive remote workers. The majority are European (including Malta, Greece, Portugal and Spain). And many others are already developing policies to favor or take advantage of the phenomenon.

The potential for acceleration of the trend is large: MOB shows that the professional satisfaction of these people is 20% higher than in conventional workers. And the pandemic helped show that it can be done: according to Hooper and Banton already in 2018 8% of the entire workforce on the planet worked from home (compared to 4% in 2016) while in 2020 it reached almost 18% on the planet.

Gartner predicts, today, by the end of this year, that 43% of the world's knowledge industry workers will be remote.

In a recent work, Nick Dreher and Anna Triandafyllidou (Toronto Metropolitan University) express that it is impossible to know how many there are in the world (due to the informal nature of the phenomenon) but that the qualitative dimension of the matter is understood in the face of shocking news: the Digital Nomads Nation has been created, an online community that defines itself as the first digital nation of workers. And it already has 155,000 members. Formed by community members who, in addition to being nomads, base their offer on high qualification (Illescu calls them "knowmads").

But nomads are many more than those already identified. And they will be even more. Just remember that there are 1.500 billion workers who connect to the internet from their jobs daily around the globe. Shortly before COVID, P. Levels estimated that by 2035 the world will have 1 billion digital nomads.

A relevant issue is that these people occupy an increasingly influential place in trends in production, work and trade (wherever they are). They are "wavemakers". And rules and policies, the organization of companies, culture and infrastructure must already provide for how to coexist with the phenomenon.

Of course, these people do not make up the majority of the world's population (far from it) but they are an inevitable portion to accompany the development of the knowledge economy, technological innovation and the development of intellectual capital.

Here is something significant for Argentina, which cannot get out of the "twenty-first century" discussion. For this and other phenomena, we will have to allow regulatory flexibilities, much greater international openness, great advances in the training of people and the provision of economic or social conditions to be eligible (or, at least, that the best of ours do not abandon us en masse).

And also encourage the presence and growth of innovative companies: they not only create professional opportunities but are the ones that best prepare, train and train these people (high-quality instruction is increasingly corporate).

And we will even have to consider this great global group in new "international relations": there are already new communities without terrestrial unity and there is a new "market" for export (by the way; the "markets" are less and less national and more and more "categories" formed by people scattered around the globe).

We could take note: if we do not swell the list of issues on the public agenda, Argentines run the risk of being left out of a frantic evolution due to our traditional rear-view ombliguismo.

Marcelo Elizondo is Chairman of the Argentine Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Director of the Master's Degree in Strategic Technology Management at ITBA

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-06-01

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-12T06:54:13.045Z
News/Politics 2024-01-30T06:10:03.374Z
News/Politics 2024-03-06T07:55:23.353Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.