Knoke is on slightly surer ground as he predicts the contraction and demise of influence of multinational central banks and other depository institutions, as the World Bank has retracted in its influence. However, when he predicts the end of gigantic corporations because of regionalization, he neglects to consider the formidable force and potential of the Internet. Of course, corporations may become smaller within the next ten years as the world grows more multipolar in its political structure. But multinational corporate entities today are actually easier to form through ecommerce, than they ever were before. The role of technology is given short shrift in the text as it relates to commerce, oddly enough, given the author's 'day job,' although he does curiously predict that the developing Global Village's children will become a
Still, identity theft, the purveying of mail-order brides and children for
adoption via the World Wide Web makes such an apparently specious and speculative contention seem less far-fetched than it initially seems.
However, there is a central contradiction at the hear of this text, a contradiction not acknowledged by the author himself, for, as increasingly corporate spin-offs, and organizations grow more regional, environmental degradation requires global efforts, as does the spread of terrorism. Knoke envisions t the possibility that the World Trade Organization could someday represent a first step towards a form of world government, in an attempt to keep such forces in check, a prospect he views with a mix of fear and trepidation. But even if global government is not the answer, clearly global rather than purely regional solutions are required to ameliorate the problems of
terrorism and global warming highlighted by the author.
Works Cited
Knoke, William. Bold New World. New York, 1996.
