I want to underline the enormous benefits it has created for billions of people around the world. Integration into the world economy is the best way for countries to grow. Stopping globalization, putting up barriers against the rest of the world, is the surest way to condemn a country, particularly a small developing country, to poverty. We must support poor countries' efforts to integrate into the world economy. But we should not dismiss the concerns of those who feel threatened by globalization.
Globalization has many dimensions.
Forty years ago, Marshall McLuhan said that electronic technology was shrinking the planet into a global village. That was true up to a point then, but all the more so now. The cost of processing, storing and transferring information is estimated to be halving every 18 months. I do not need to go through all the superlatives that will describe the amount of information any of us can access in a few minutes, relative to what was available even a few years ago. The number of internet users has reached 250 million on some estimates and is rising at a dizzying speed.