398 Global Ethics for Leadership
Moreover, from the point of view of the marketplace and communi-
cations industry, marked by conglomerates, oligopolies, convergence is
concentration: focus/converging to dominate. In this case, there is the
denial of the difference/diversity, of the possibility of the different. The
power that highlights the communications industry reflects the political-
economic-cultural imperial power established in the world. The Babel
that lived in the contemporaneity of convergence and promotes the deni-
al of cultural diversity, starting with the only language in the global
market, the English, followed by what prevails in the arts, in the news,
in the educational content, in the values that relates to individualism,
consumerism and competition.
“Yesterday we could not communicate because of lack of appropri-
ate techniques. Today, they swarm, but we do not understand each other
better. [...] Today everyone sees everything or almost everything, but
realizes, at the same time, that they do not understand better what hap-
pens. The visibility of the world is not enough to make it more under-
standable. Even ubiquitous, information cannot explain a world per-
ceived as more complex, more dangerous, less controllable and where
cultural and religious differences are exacerbated. The end of the physi-
cal distances reveals the incredible extension of cultural distances.”^301
Furthermore, market competition for control of the converging me-
dia and for extracting them more incentives to consumerism brings the
issue of privacy. If, on the one hand, the interaction between users is
positive, to exchange information, images and data, on the other, atti-
tudes of companies are worrying. They assemble databases based on
browsing habits and in the information that the user provides in the net-
work. He/she does not always realizes the dimension of how much is
exposing of him/herself.
301
Ibid, 19.