All Change

While we were away in Brazil,it seems that quite a few things changed. For a start the bank closed for refurbishments.



Then there was the Supermarket that changed colour (it was blue)!



We also found out that Starbucks and KFC are coming to Cusco, as well as the upcoming mall which is being built including loads of shops, restaurants and a cinema.

All of this change adds to the constant knocking down and building that we see around ourselves.

This lead me to reflect on the changes in our world. As we all know the world is changing rapidly, with new technologies constantly revolutionising our world. Some of these changes are more positive, while some are negative, but the aspect of these changes which interests me most is the speed that they are taking affect. This is not just the speed of the innovations, but the speed with whcih they travel around the world.

In the past it seemed to take a long while for a new technology or cultural phenomenon to appear in different places. Now, when something changes in one part of the world, it is quite possible that people on the other side of the world will know about it, and be affected by it. Take the IPhone for example. They seem to be omnipresent in the West, but they are also present here in Peru. A friend of mine who is a missionary here has one, and my language teacher has a 'Chi-Phone', which is basically the same thing, though at a fraction of the cost. The reason for the speed of transmission of these changes is obviously globalisation and the internet, and although this does have some benefits, it can also do so harm, particularly to local cultures. It will be interesting to see how different global phenomonen affect Peru in the future.

So change keeps coming, and a lot of it is good, but globalisation is causing the affects of those changes to be felt more and more quickly.