Globalization as an idea is not new but as a phenomenon is completely novel to our modern age.
The rise of free market economies in democracies around the world has made the world into a linked inter web where things happening thousands of miles away from us can effect us in different ways.
We are culturally and economically connected to the whole world and the flow of information is basically unbound.
This was not the case even a few decades ago and had never been. The world truly became global at the end of the 20th century.
