Name: 【TED】Parag Khanna: How megacities are changing the map of the world (How megacities are changing the map of the world | Parag Khanna)
Uploaded: 2016-10-19T07:13:48.000Z
Duration: 20 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

I want you to reimagine how life is organized on earth.

Think of the planet like a human body that we inhabit.

The skeleton is the transportation system of roads and railways,

that enable our mobility across the continents.

are the oil and gas pipelines and electricity grids.

is the Internet cables, satellites, cellular networks

and data centers that allow us to share information.

This ever-expanding infrastructural matrix

already consists of 64 million kilometers of roads,

and one million kilometers of Internet cables.

We have less than 500,000 kilometers of borders.

And we can start by overcoming some ancient mythology.

There's a saying with which all students of history are familiar:

It tells us that landlocked countries are condemned to be poor,

that small countries cannot escape their larger neighbors,

But every journey I take around the world,

I see an even greater force sweeping the planet:

The global connectivity revolution, in all of its forms --

transportation, energy and communications --

has enabled such a quantum leap in the mobility of people,

such that we can no longer even think of geography as distinct from it.

In fact, I view the two forces as fusing together

in the mobility of people, resources and ideas,

an evolution of the world from political geography,

which is how we legally divide the world,

from nations and borders, to infrastructure and supply chains.

from the vertically integrated empires of the 19th century,

through the horizontally interdependent nations of the 20th century,

into a global network civilization in the 21st century.

has become the organizing principle of the human species.

We are becoming this global network civilization

All of the world's defense budgets and military spending taken together

total just under two trillion dollars per year.

Meanwhile, our global infrastructure spending

is projected to rise to nine trillion dollars per year

We have been living off an infrastructure stock

meant for a world population of three billion,

as our population has crossed seven billion to eight billion

As a rule of thumb, we should spend about one trillion dollars

on the basic infrastructure needs of every billion people in the world.

of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,

which together with a network of other organizations

aims to construct a network of iron and silk roads,

And as all of this topographical engineering unfolds,

we will likely spend more on infrastructure in the next 40 years,

we will build more infrastructure in the next 40 years,

Now let's stop and think about it for a minute.

Spending so much more on building the foundations of global society

Connectivity is how we optimize the distribution

of people and resources around the world.

It is how mankind comes to be more than just the sum of its parts.

Connectivity has a twin megatrend in the 21st century:

Cities are the infrastructures that most define us.

By 2030, more than two thirds of the world's population

And these are not mere little dots on the map,

but they are vast archipelagos stretching hundreds of kilometers.

that stretches south across the US border to Seattle.

The technology powerhouse of Silicon Valley

begins north of San Francisco down to San Jose

The sprawl of Los Angeles now passes San Diego

San Diego and Tijuana now share an airport terminal

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TED】Parag Khanna: How megacities are changing the map of the world (How megacities are changing the map of the world | Parag Khanna)

world

people

number

mobility