> They've converged because we think they're nice.
Here is the trap. We think they are nice because globalisation works on a more profound level. The "visible" level of globalisation are the consumer products. What's also transmitted are certain intellectual ideas and schools of thought, certain aesthetics and forms of art. For example, the attempts to explain the economy on an individual behavioural and psychological basis are pretty much a post-WW2 Western thing and now it has pervaded the world. Every non-English self-help book reads like a similar US book. In a way, these ideas transform the local cultures and now everybody thinks like the West and wants the same things as the West.
How would you differentiate "true" convergence, where everyone agrees a certain idea is superior, vs what you seem to describe here, a sort of imposition of ideas?
I often revist the ideas of Brooks; are we converging on the essense, the "conceptual integrity"? or the superficial, the accidental? I also recognize that there's unlikley to be a single dimension for convergence. The individual will define the balance and acceptable tolerances to it.
I also used to think that ubiquity was some sort of evidence of superiority. However, as was briefly mentioned upthread, you realize that often ubiquity has more to do with consumer products and the monopolies that capture markets. And ubiquitous consumer products often do not achieve that status due to superior design, but actually superior profit margins, which in the realm of manufactured consumer products, means the most efficient design for the most efficient manufacturing method. You realize that the manufacturing process can influence the design. The most ubiquitous door, urinal, toilet, and hand dryer are often not the most aesthetically pleasing or even, design-wise, most sensibility designed, but just the cheapest to purchase, most efficient to manufacture, or the only option.
So to answer your question, we typically call the latter in cultural studies capitalism.
I don't think we should conflate ubiquity with superiority, but it is easy to see how the latter often leads to the former. Perhaps Western movies are indeed considered very good, even by people from other cultures, which is why they decide to watch them. Or perhaps the cars invented last century, first developed in the West, already found some optimal designs that are simply more efficient, and therefore will be widely adopted.
Your implied explanation is rather bleak, as it seems that capitalism is independent of consumer wants or needs in this perspective.
It could be a trap if you value diversity or it could be a good thing if you value supra-national uniformity across continents, where people act the same way, think and build the same way, want the same cars and want the same visual traits in women.
I like weird shit a lot more than the next guy, and I think you're being pointlessly melodramatic about it. Convergent evolution of tastes is not the same as fascism.
It's much worse. It's global submission to the machine, which is not even a political project. What is easy, convenient, efficient, from a machine perspective, therefore is aspirational, desirable, wholesome from a human perspective. This is what's happening.
We are all becoming widgets, that is to say, mere participants in bureaucracies, cogs in mechanized processes. Compare the existential dread people experienced in the 1800s when the factory mode of production reduced people to skinner pigeons, how it alienated labor. Now, we've completed submitted to this alienation, in fact, even celebrate it. For example, think some Tesla promotional with a robotized factory floor and a single worker with some doodad pressing buttons. A truly dystopian sight, yet, there we are, using it as advertisement.
To repeat the question a couple of levels up: how would you differentiate convergence on the best (so far) solutions from "submission to the machine" ?
The outdoor gear (hiking, camping, cycling) that I use today is an order of magnitude better than the stuff I used in the 1970s. And even though the brands vary (to some degree) worldwide, the designs, features, and materials have pretty much converged everywhere. Goretex (or something like it) is better than PU-coated nylon. Angle-cut wrists with velcro closures just do work better than loose or elastic wrists. Internal frame backpacks are lighter, more comfortable and in just about every way superior to the old external frame designs. A tent that weighs 2/3 or even 1/2 of a tent from 1980 is a better tent for everything except car camping, and contemporary tents are much better at dealing with wind loads.
I could go on for a long time. How do we differentiate improvements like this, spread across the globe to the point of uniformity, from your "submission to the machine" ?
I don't dispute we've seen quality improvements in some areas. Hiking gear is a complete triviality though. Nothing stopped people from enjoying hiking 50 years ago with bad gear, and the qualitative experience of camping, "enjoying the great outdoors", communing with nature, is not better today than it was then. What has improved is maybe the convenience. The real shift is in our core surroundings, what real should matter, and there quality and diversity has completely plummeted (homes, furniture, art, ...). Outdoors people generally celebrate the inherent value of large biodiversity, but seeing diversity in human expression completely collapse is suddenly "convergence". That is what is meant by submission to the machine. Simplicity, uniformity is desirable from a machine perspective (e.g. easier to operate simple machine, easier to operate simple bureaucracy). Those values humans now have internalized as aspirational as well.
> Nothing stopped people from enjoying hiking 50 years ago with bad gea
we can't prove it's the gear, and it is likely not to be the dominant factor, but vastly more people do in fact participate in this sor of activity today than they did 50 years, so i would argue that actually, gear did play a role in "stopping people from enjoying hiking". Not "all people", but some people.
however, i feel that you're overly focused on the details of my examples. i could have picked dozens of hundreds of examples of where the things we have available today (where notable convergence in design has occured) are just better. i don't feel that you've answered my question about you would differentiate the two processes, and instead have tried to use the "outdoor gear" example as a way to simply come up with a reiteration of your initial claim.
but convergence can also just be ... convergence. People can actually agree that there's a better/best way to do something independent of other motivations.
Here is the trap. We think they are nice because globalisation works on a more profound level. The "visible" level of globalisation are the consumer products. What's also transmitted are certain intellectual ideas and schools of thought, certain aesthetics and forms of art. For example, the attempts to explain the economy on an individual behavioural and psychological basis are pretty much a post-WW2 Western thing and now it has pervaded the world. Every non-English self-help book reads like a similar US book. In a way, these ideas transform the local cultures and now everybody thinks like the West and wants the same things as the West.