What are the costs and limits of the technological advances that drive globalization?
Topic 9.2 Technological Advances and Limitations: the disease, environmental, and other costs and limits of technological change, including pandemics, pollution, and unequal access.
A focused answer to AP World History Topic 9.2, explaining the limitations and costs of technological change: new and re-emerging diseases like influenza and HIV/AIDS, environmental damage from pollution and warming, the digital divide, and unequal access to technology.
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What this topic is asking
Topic 9.2 covers the limitations and costs of the technological change that drives globalization. It asks you to balance the advances of Topic 9.1 against their downsides: the spread of disease, environmental damage, and the unequal access to technology that leaves many people and regions behind. The point is that technological progress is double-edged.
What "limitations" means here
Technology and the spread of disease
Connection spreads illness as well as goods.
Environmental costs
Growth has damaged the planet.
The technological and economic growth of the modern era has imposed heavy environmental costs:
- Pollution. Industry, vehicles, and energy use have polluted air, water, and land.
- Resource depletion and deforestation. Rising consumption has depleted resources and destroyed forests and habitats.
- Climate change. The burning of fossil fuels has driven global warming, a planet-wide threat developed fully in Topic 9.4.
These costs show that technological "progress" can endanger the very environment humans depend on.
Unequal access: the digital divide
The benefits are not shared equally.
Technology's benefits are unevenly distributed. A digital divide separates those with reliable access to the internet, computers, and modern technology from those without - both between wealthy and poor countries and between rich and poor within countries. Those with access gain education, economic, and information advantages; those without fall further behind. More broadly, the most advanced technologies, including medicine, tend to reach the affluent first. Technology can also be turned to surveillance, control, and weapons. So globalization's technological gains have widened some inequalities even as they have connected the world.
Try this
Q1. Name the term for the gap between those with and without access to the internet and modern technology. [Recall]
- Cue. The digital divide.
Q2. Explain one way the technology that drives globalization also spreads disease. [Short explanation]
- Cue. Fast global transportation, especially air travel, lets diseases spread worldwide rapidly, so a new or re-emerging illness can become a global pandemic quickly, as with the 1918 influenza and later outbreaks.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of College Board exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
AP 2021 (style)3 marksBriefly identify ONE negative consequence of technological change. Briefly explain ONE way technology spread disease. Briefly explain ONE way access to technology is unequal.Show worked answer →
A Short Answer Question (SAQ), 3 points, one per bullet.
A. Identify: technological and industrial change has caused serious environmental damage, including pollution and climate change.
B. Disease: fast global travel let diseases spread worldwide rapidly, as in the influenza pandemic of 1918 and later pandemics.
C. Unequal access: a digital divide means wealthier people and countries have far better access to the internet and modern technology than poorer ones.
Each bullet must be concrete.
AP 2023 (style)6 marksEvaluate the most significant limitation or cost of technological change in the period c. 1900 to the present.Show worked answer →
A Long Essay Question (LEQ), scored on the 6-point causation rubric.
Thesis (1): "The most significant cost of technological change was environmental damage, especially the pollution and warming that threaten the whole planet, though the spread of disease and the unequal access to technology were also serious limitations."
Contextualization (1): situate the costs in the rapid technological and economic growth of the modern era.
Evidence (2): pollution and climate change; pandemics like the 1918 influenza and HIV/AIDS; the digital divide and unequal access.
Analysis (2): explain HOW technology produced these costs, then add complexity by weighing environmental damage against disease and inequality."
Related dot points
- Topic 9.1 Advances in Technology and Exchange: the technological advances in communication, transportation, energy, and medicine that accelerated globalization after 1900.
A focused answer to AP World History Topic 9.1, explaining the technological advances that accelerated globalization: communication from the radio to the internet, transportation from air travel to container shipping, new energy sources, and medical and agricultural breakthroughs.
- Topic 9.3 Disease in a Globalized World: the patterns of disease, the medical and public-health advances that fought it, and the resulting changes in population and life expectancy after 1900.
A focused answer to AP World History Topic 9.3, explaining disease in a globalized world: epidemic and pandemic diseases like influenza and HIV/AIDS, the medical advances of vaccines and antibiotics, diseases of longevity and affluence, and the population boom of the twentieth century.
- Topic 9.4 Environment in a Globalized World: the environmental consequences of population growth, industrialization, and consumption, including climate change, pollution, and resource depletion, and the global responses to them.
A focused answer to AP World History Topic 9.4, explaining the environment in a globalized world: climate change driven by fossil fuels, pollution, deforestation and resource depletion from population growth and consumption, and global responses from environmental movements to international agreements.
- Topic 9.5 Economics in the Global Age: the economic changes of globalization, including free-market neoliberalism, multinational corporations, free-trade agreements, and the rise of new economic powers.
A focused answer to AP World History Topic 9.5, explaining economics in the global age: the spread of free-market neoliberalism, the rise of multinational corporations and global supply chains, free-trade agreements and blocs, and the emergence of new economic powers like China and India.
- Topic 9.8 Resistance to Globalization After 1900: the economic, cultural, and political resistance to globalization, including anti-globalization movements, religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and terrorism.
A focused answer to AP World History Topic 9.8, explaining resistance to globalization: economic anti-globalization movements, cultural and religious resistance including fundamentalism, the revival of nationalism and protectionism, and political violence and terrorism.
Sources & how we know this
- AP World History: Modern Course and Exam Description — College Board (2020)