I think the difference is that technology, now, allows for far better distribution of effort around the globe. Previously, as you mention, technology was uplifting silo'd productivity - but was not allowing for whole industries to be either globally distributed (information based industries) or remotely centralized (agriculture exports).
We now have sufficient technology in all areas to allow for both; the global distribution of knowledge working, sufficient advancements in production technology to increase output efficiencies in specific areas that centralization of output for the global economy can occur (e.g. agri output from say brazil supporting a large % of global soybean consumption - and manifacturing in China supporting a large % of global doohickey consumption)
We are reaching a change in the overall model of economies, where previously each nation was duplicating a large portion of the industries as their production was only enough for internal consumption.
If you look at the entire planet as a single resource zone, then naturally you will have uneven distribution of resources, production, knowledge, etc... thus uneven distribution of labor to support this.
If we could see a heat map of the globe's resources to people to markets to [name a factor]... etc. but weighted by their pull in each direction, then maybe we could better model how the global economy really looks.
Extra Credit: weight the flow of this map to energy dependence and you'll really see how fragile this little world is.
We now have sufficient technology in all areas to allow for both; the global distribution of knowledge working, sufficient advancements in production technology to increase output efficiencies in specific areas that centralization of output for the global economy can occur (e.g. agri output from say brazil supporting a large % of global soybean consumption - and manifacturing in China supporting a large % of global doohickey consumption)
We are reaching a change in the overall model of economies, where previously each nation was duplicating a large portion of the industries as their production was only enough for internal consumption.
If you look at the entire planet as a single resource zone, then naturally you will have uneven distribution of resources, production, knowledge, etc... thus uneven distribution of labor to support this.
If we could see a heat map of the globe's resources to people to markets to [name a factor]... etc. but weighted by their pull in each direction, then maybe we could better model how the global economy really looks.
Extra Credit: weight the flow of this map to energy dependence and you'll really see how fragile this little world is.