Smartphones connect the planet, yet the borderless world promised by the early internet age never arrived. This DW Documentary traces globalization through seven regions, tracking how supply chains, raw materials, and digital technology bind economies together even as geopolitical rivalry pulls them apart. TSMC chief executive Mark Liu reflects on how the hopes of the dot-com era, that borders would dissolve and inequality would shrink, failed to materialize, replaced instead by talk of blocs and spheres of influence between the United States and China. The film follows the smartphone from Steve Jobs's 2007 unveiling through the factories, ports, and negotiating rooms that make a single device possible, using it as a lens on who benefits from interconnected production and who gets squeezed out. Europe's economies look increasingly stagnant against faster-moving regions elsewhere, and the film asks who is actually winning this reshuffled global order. Interviews with executives and workers ground the argument in specific industries rather than abstractions. Part one of a two-part series.