Global Society Article Analysis

The early twentieth century was an amazing thing to read about with factories being made autonomous and different tools and weapons being created daily. Every year since the beginning of time there have been things created with people getting smarter through constant learning. In the last couple hundred years, there has been a shift from steadily inventing new things to a massive uproar in inventions in the early 20th century. From the case study reading of ‘From Horse Power to Horsepower (page 2), it says that at the very beginning of the 20th century, there was a crucial problem at hand and that problem was horses and their manure. The horses were efficient but they are too expensive to feed and maintain so another solution had to be made up. One of the main reasons why people think of the 20th century as an amazing rate of inventions is due to the publication of cars. In the article labelled ‘Global Society (page 16)’, it confirms my point saying “The internal combustion engine revolutionized land transportation in the 20th century”. Horses have been a part of history since the first written documentation about society at large. Cars are the new horses and are the dominant outcome if they were to be pitted against each other. Before the car, many animals were used to do the work of transporting but now that the car was there most people switched to only having a car. This is an example of homogenization as everything and every one person starts to use the same object in this case the car. In a short amount of time, the variations or methods used to do labour dropped drastically and most just went with a car to do their work. From that same article as last mentioned it also mentions cars as “horseless carriages” which is just a reminder of how “cars” are better and a major breakthrough. Cars replacing horses are not the only thing that makes the beginning of the 20th century so revolutionary, but also the creation of global communications. According to ‘Global Society (page 16-17)’, by the year 1900 “hundreds of thousands of thick copper cable had been laid underneath the world’s oceans. This new technology was able to get messages from the “London stock exchange to New York in under 3 minutes”, making it much easier to plan wartime strategies and get secret messages out without enemies finding out. In ‘global Society’(page 17), the British government realized what a game-changer this technology was so they created something called an “all-red” cable line which lead to all the British colonies at the time. This line was an emergency line that could communicate emergencies safely from wherever was needed. Standardization essentially means “regularity” which can be seen happening all around the world and especially in the 20th century. I agree fully with the fact that the early 20th century was an “ unprecedented moment of standardization and homogenization.”. I agree because before the 20th century there were times when not even horses were used and then all of a sudden it became standardized. This is just like with cars as the horses were seen as a necessity to everyday life but once the car came everyone seemed to forget about horses which is the process of standardization.