The first part of this article presents a brief analysis of the reasons why the immense amount of technological innovation in (old and new) industrialized countries does not seem to have contributed to any increase in social welfare. It is argued that the support from the political system to multinational firms' strategies for globalization is too affirmative, for reasons that are more of an ideological than of an economic nature. Thus, in the second part of the article the contours of a transnational politics are outlined, in an attempt to show how technological innovation can serve the development of a new social welfare around the globe.