Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous even when they deserve to be left in the past.

I think that globalization is partly responsible for the spread of the hostile, radical forms of Islam.

Is Islam a tribe or is it a force of globalization? Islam has certainly been studied as a local, tribalistic phenomenon. But Islam is also theoretically a universalist idea, its spread has been facilitated by modern technologies, and it's an identity that people can slip into and out of fairly easily. I don't think Islam has really been understood as a product of globalization. It might be one of these instances where globalism and tribalism ultimately go hand in hand.

Indeed, this is an important characteristic of the globalization debate: the tendency toward glorifying all things indigenous even when they deserve to be left in the past.

Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions.

One of the fantastic things about Silicon Valley is that it's both the birthplace of technology and it was one of the birthplaces of the counterculture. The Internet and the personal computer were going to be like the communes, where we would all be networked together, and we would be able to achieve this state of global consciousness.

Most of the time the concept of globalization ends up sounding unnecessarily abstruse - even the name itself sounds clunky and highfalutin. And people discuss it in a way that makes it seem so impersonal. But globalization really is a concrete, fundamental fact in everybody's lives, and you really see that come to life in soccer stadiums.