Source 23.6, a composite satellite photograph of the world at night taken in late 2000, reflects three aspects of the globalization process. The first is the growing consciousness of the earth as a single place, the common home of humankind. Such thinking has been fostered by and expressed in those many remarkable images of the earth taken from space or from the moon (see the chapter-opening photo). In such photographs, no artificial boundaries of state or nation are visible, just a solitary planet cast against the immeasurable vastness of space. Second, this photograph shows the globalization of electricity, a central feature of modern life, which has taken place since the late nineteenth century. Third, and finally, the relative levels of electrification depicted in this image reflect the sharp variations in modern development across the planet as the twenty-first century dawned.