FROM POPULAR TO MASS, NATIONAL TO INTERNATIONAL

Wayne Yang, a fellow blogger, argues that we are all able to speak the same cultural language as a result of the homogenizing effects of globalization on his blog located at http://eightdiagrams.typepad.com/eight_diagrams/2005/04/tech_tool_grass.html. I think that this is the result of cultural evolution overtime.
In the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, urbanization took place across Europe and America. People of diverse economic and social backgrounds migrated into cities creating larger communities. The quality of education, health care, and modern industry quickly improved. The invention of the steam locomotive and steamship allowed people and their cultural values to reach more people in more places within their nations. Among all these industrial changes, a new culture emerged. Popular culture arises when a certain identifiable group within a community shares a cultural style. Knitting, cooking or storytelling abilities common to members of a certain society are examples of things that can comprise the popular culture of a certain group. As urbanization became more common and transportation became more accessible to all, pop culture began to have a mass appeal. From this, the concept of mass culture emerged. While members of a society actively contribute to the pop culture they share, passive members of a society may be stimulated by the cultural influences of mass culture. Products of mass culture such as fashion and movies are produced to appeal to target consumers. People do not have to take part in the conception or production of mass cultural products. As the visionary businesses that developed mass cultural products became more successful within the nations they marketed their products to, their next step was to further expand. They expanded their target audience from potential consumers of a nation to potential consumers of the entire world. The strength of globalization assisted these businesses in successfully accomplishing this. Today, a producer of a mass cultural product can market and sell this product to six billion consumers around the world. As a result, all these consumers share the product and the culture associated with it. In this way, it is as if all of humanity can speak the same cultural language.