
The time it takes for
something to reach
another place is
getting shorter
 Promotes rapid changes
 Spreads cultural and
economic ideas much
more quickly
 Ex. Cross-continental
travel
It’s a Small World…and getting smaller.


Only possible by physical
travel in the past
Today, people can
interact in many forms
 Facebook
 Teleconference

Limits potential for
‘distance decay’
 Groups far apart were
unlikely to interact in the
past.
http://www.sparkminute.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/podcast-moneyelsie-escobar22.jpg

Process by which
something spreads
across space from one
place to another over
time
 Ex. – inventions, ideas,
values
 Hearth – The place from
which an innovation
originates
Spread of cell phone usage,
1980-2010

Spread of an idea
through the physical
movement of people
from one place to
another
 Usually for political or
economic reasons
 Newcomers bring their
culture with them
(language, religion…)
The spread of a feature
from one place to
another in a
‘snowballing process’
 Three kinds of
expansion diffusion:

 Hierarchical diffusion
 Contagious diffusion
 Stimulus diffusion
http://people-equation.com/wpcontent/uploads/snowball_iStock_000007725565XSmall.jpg http://peopleequation.com/wpcontent/uploads/snowball_iStock_000007725565XSmall.jpg

Hierarchical
 Ideas or trends are
spread by persons of
power or influence

Ex. Trends in fashion
often start in NYC,
Paris, or Milan and
spread to the rest of
the world.

Contagious

Ex: Spread of
communicable
diseases

Ex1: Students will talk
with slang well before
it reaches the teachers.
 Widespread diffusion
throughout the
population

The farther you are
from the source, the
later you are impacted

Stimulus
 Spread of an underlying
principle (ex. computer
mouse)

Mac and Windows
were about the same
until Windows used the
mouse, then it spread
faster.



Core regions - North
America, Western
Europe, Japan
Peripheral regions –
most of Asia, Africa,
Latin America
Uneven Development
 Increasing gap in economic
conditions between
regions of the world (core
vs. periphery)
 Result of a global economy