Author: Alex Hamilton Published: November 18, 2011 at 7:07 am
The real agent of massive global economic change is not one of the usual suspects, it is actually something rather mundane- standardization.
Yes that's right, standardization. Incredibly boring I know. But it has changed the world before and is about to again.
The humble shipping container may not seem like the engine that drove globalization for the 20th Century, but it is. And like the shipping container of the 20th Century, it will be Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled sim cards that will drive innovation and globalization in the 21st Century. Or at least for the next decade.
The move to standard sized shipping containers during World War Two, but particularly in the years that followed, enabled massive and efficient movements of goods all around the world, and as of 2009 approximately 90% of non-bulk cargo is moved this way. Henry Ford changed the world with the production line, but no one changed they way it was shipped, until containerization.
So yes, innovation came from many sources, Japan and Germany not burdened by having to pay for their own defence budgets could invest in R&D in all areas of their economies and the USA could expand into the golden era of the Long Boom, and so on. But all this wonderful capitalism would not have been possible on the scale and time frame that it happened without the backbone of the globalization being the standardized shipping container.
This does not fit the narrative of combat that is so often touted as the raison d'être of capitalism, but it is when things get standardized that change starts to take place. Just within the bounds of the standard. Westinghouse versus Maytag is still just as bloody, except all their wares are shipped in the same sized containers.
Continued on the next pageRead more: http://technorati.com/technology/article/why-standardization-of-nfc-will-change/#ixzz1e5QNW43h
