Experts have a role to play but you don't want them in the driver's seat for the whole project. The first thing to realize is that the world is full of paradoxes and always will be. We are always going to live in a local place but that doesn't mean we won't trade with people in some non-local place. I can't imagine a time when you can produce everything in your own community. I'm comfortable living with paradoxes.
People simultaneously exist in thirty or forty communities.
The world is becoming more of a corporatized community more than a global one. When people say global today, they are describing one particular form of globalization which is controlled by corporations who have no sort of local allegiance. That's one of the amazing things about language as a medium of communication. It could mean anything, so it probably means nothing. Regardless of the emptiness of the term, I think exploring the meanings and possibilities and implications of increased communications world-wide is one of the most important jobs we have before us.