The satellite transmission jumped from Australian dancers evolving from the desert sand to Inuit dancers of northern Canada performing on the frozen tundra. Each reflected the best of its culture through expressions of the arts to share worldwide through technology. When the satellite feed shifted to Times Square in New York, viewers caught a contrast between the world's indigenous cultural expressions and the commercial culture of economics. At the base of the descending crystal globe a sign advertised "Discover Card." Along the street, illumined signs and logos promoted CitiBank and the McDonald's golden arches. Just to display a brand name in Times Square meant advertising to nearly a billion people.

The millennial celebration broadcast effectively demonstrated the essential link between technology and the global economy. Without modern technology the global economy could not exist.  Because manufacturing now extends into every corner of the world, production depends on technology that even relatively unskilled workers can use. Workers need to learn only a few key steps for making a product when the process becomes simplified. All that depends on a unified product. One multinational executive said recently, "Religion, historical tradition, local clothing, music and art are the enemy of globalized business. The Corporate America wants everyone to listen to the same music, wear the same type of clothing, use the same consumer goods--goods that can be produced in mass. That is how we profit in a global economy."

Besides coordinating production in factories around the world, technology promotes the ethic of consumption. In many developing nations reruns of "Dallas" introduce the nascent middle class to a dazzling array of things to eat, drink, wear and enjoy. Success gets defined in terms of personal riches and their accompanying power. Brand names displayed prominently on a piece of apparel show that the wearer possesses status, exudes sophistication, shops in the global marketplace. Corporate logos and brand names, in this sense, are selling a culture as much as a product.

The Church continually affirms the diversity of cultures as expressions of the Holy Spirit. John Paul II warns that economics, of itself, does not possess the criteria for correctly distinguishing between higher forms of satisfying human needs from ways of creating artificial new wants. "It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed toward "having" rather than "being;" (Centesimus Annus, par. 36.3.)