It is very true that The World is Flat

In his lecture that I have just viewed on the internet Thomas Friedman articulately yet humorously  talks about how the world has flattened. As much as he makes it interesting, this is a very important issue especially at this particular point in time. He gives advice to student by giving an example of what his mother used to tell him when he was growing up that he shouldn't waste his food because children in China are starving. He says that today, he gives the same advice to his kids but it is no longer about food but about learning. He tells them to do their homework so kids from China do not take their jobs in future.   One key point that I picked from this talk is that nothing is going to stop globalization. Therefore, it is up to the countries to be ahead of the changes, and that the whole world even developing countries understand this.

Friedman’s list of “flatteners” includes;

1. The fall of the Berlin Wall(11-9-89); It enabled the Eastern policies to influence the Westerns and the same to the South and North. At the same time as the Berlin wall came down, the Windows operating system, a single Graphical User Interface (GUI) came up.
2. The rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom that led to a trillion dollar investment in fiber optic cable(8-9-95); allowing more people in more places to connect freely yet with limitless connections.
3. The emergence of common software platforms and open source code enabling global collaboration; People can connect and work collaboratively with each other over standardized network  and softwares that enable us to communicate like never before.
4. The rise of outsourcing, offshoring, opensourcing, supply chaining, insourcing, insourcing and steroids are as a result of the  above three flatteners. Friedman says these flatteners converged around the year 2000, and “created a flat world: a global, web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance, geography and increasingly, language.” 

I believe that every one including school kids should know this because actually we are running a little behind. Friedman states that once one understands the 10 flattenners, then they are in a position to explain the rise in energy consumption, outsourcing, MIT opensourcing, 9-11 and even Alkaida.


Actually, the video is a very condensed version of the whole lecture running about 1.15 hrs but it is very educative as much as it is entertaining, Watch Video. This then, encourages me to take time and read the book which can also be found in a audio form that can be downloaded on an iPod or any MP3 player for those constantly on the move.