“The World is Flat” is a very catchy yet baffling title. Initially, no clue is given about the book being related to technology, yet the author is able to describe how technology is revolutionizing the world. Thomas L. Friedman starts his book by describing how he came up with the phrase “The World is Flat”. He begins his book by comparing his journey to the one of Columbus’ trip to India and how Columbus and had concluded that the world was flat. On his visit to Bangalore he visits Infosys Technologies Limited. While setting up the camera for the interview, Nandan Nilekani he CEO of the company gave a tour of the campus.
While on the tour Nilekani takes Friedman to the conference room and tells him “so, this is our conference room, probably the largest screen in Asia-this is forty digital screens [put together]” (6). Nilekani explains the reason for having big screens so that they can interact with people from New York, Singapore, Boston and London etc. by just sitting in a small room. Globalization is the word which Nilekani uses. Just above the screens were clocks showing various times and were labeled US West, US east, Singapore. For this he refers to the term outsourcing.
After the tour Nilekani says “Tom. The playing field is being levelled. ” By this he meant that countries like India which is so much poor is also able to compete in the global knowledge/market. This is what makes Friedman things about the world being flattened. The interesting thing about his book is that Friedman uses real events to prove that the world is flat. Friedman talk about the call centers he visits in India. “There are currently 245,000 Indians answering phones from all over the world or dialing out o solicit people for credit card.
Although these jobs are easy and nonpaying jobs in the US but the same jobs are in high demand in countries like India, China. As he says, “The total cost of each call center operator is actually around $500 per month when they start out and closer to $600 to $700 per month after six months” (25). This type of outsourcing and globalization has caused the American companies to take advantage of cheap labor but at the same time has created jobs for the developing countries like India and China and thus improved their economy. The first four chapters of this book focus on why the world is flat.
He also mentions about free trade agreement between different countries which is also a reason why the world is flat pg. 44. Thus, to concluded this chapter he just says that technology is a good thing but it is changing so rapidly that “The great challenge would be to absorb these changes” (49). In chapter two, Friedman uses ten arguments to prove that the earth is flat. But before he starts he refers to the bible, “The Bible tells us that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Flattening the world took a little longer” (50). Then he starts off with his ten forces that flattened the world.
The first flattener is the fall of Berlin wall on 11/9/89 which opened previously closed market and the combination of the web and the internet. The fall of the berlin wall ended the cold war which reunited a broken country. Not only did it introduce technological advances but it also helped grow the country back to normal. Friedman says that “The fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t just help flatten the alternatives to free- market capitalism and unlock enormous pent-up energies for undreds of millions of people in places like India, Brazil, China, and the former Soviet Empire” (53).
He then refers to the web and the internet. This is the second flattener and he describes it in two phases. First phase is the computers and the other phase is internet. Both of these things have allowed individuals to connect with one another all around the world. Then Freidman talks about the collaboration of businesses across countries using software and how they are uploading things on the internet which makes information available to people globally with in a fraction of second. This marks the third flattener.
Businesses are using theses software’s to merge with other companies at a much quicker way than before. Software’s like HTML, XML, SOAP halve eliminated what Friedman calls the “Tower of Babel”, thus eliminating confusion and disruption in the work flow. When he talks about uploading he means uploading information on the web for other people to look at the information. The various software used for uploading are Wikipedia, community-developed software, blogging/ podcasting. Even though the number of uploaders is relatively small but it is increasi as ore and more people are starting to use technology.
The fourth flattener, open sourcing which Friedman describes as “an important flattener because it makes available for free many tools, from software to encyclopedias, that millions of people around the world would have had to buy in order to use” (102). Outsourcing, offshoring, supply-chaining and insourcing has also helped companies to efficiently utilize and depend on other countries for resources. Outsourcing is when a company gives part of its job to another company. Friedman had noticed this on his trip to India how American ompanies were outsourcing their customer service to Indian as it was cheap.
The biggest one being the Y2K. Then he goes ahead to talk about Offshoring. Offshoring is when a company moves one of its factories to another country. “According to the U. S. Commerce Department, nearly 90 percent of the output from U. S. -owned offshore factories is sold to foreign consumers. But this actually stimulates American exports. ” Friedman describes supply-chaining as “a method of collaborating horizontally–among suppliers, retailers, and customers–to create value. ” Insourcing “FedEx and UPS should be one of your latteners.
They’re not just delivering packages, they are doing logistics,” Lastly, with the help of Google, Bing and as Friedman calls “the steroids” or the tools of technology, people can use this to search for information which also makes the world flatter by making information available to people on the tip of their hands. In chapter three, Friedman evaluates “the triple convergence”. The first convergence being how things were different after the year 2000. Things changed because everything became global because of the use of web platform.
The second convergence as the presence of business skills and practices such as managers, innovators, business school’s designers, IT specialists, CEOS and workers. These were the then flatters that enhanced the ten flatters. The third convergence was when billions of people entered on to the ground. Countries such as China, Russia, Latin America, Europe, India and Central Asia their economic systems changed in a way that they were able to join the free-market. Because of the free market there have been a number of jobs available to the people in these countries.
Friedman ends this chapter by referring to this statement that technology will literally transform every aspect of business, every aspect of life and every aspect of society. ” (233) In chapter four, Friedman talks about what he believes will happen after the triple convergence. The biggest being chaos and confusion. Because of the great convergence there will be “Great Sorting Out” which will change our thinking. He even gives us specific examples, the most important being about India and how the companies there had won the unemployment department of state of Indiana because it put a bid for 8. million dollars lower than its competitors.
But that’s not it, he uses various type of questions to better understand the great sorting. Questions such as Offshoring: Who is Exploiting Who, Where Do Companies Stop and Start? From Command and Control to Collaborate and Connect, Multiple Identity Disorder, Who Owns What, Death of the Salesmen. Clearly, we see that the world with its use of technology has made the world flat. The first four chapters of Friedman’s book give sufficient information about the world being round. In the first chapter, he gives us a background about how he came up with the title of the book.
In he second chapter Friedman uses the ten arguments to prove that the earth is flat. In chapter three he evaluates how the ten flatteners joined to make the world flatter. Lastly, in chapter four, Friedman talks about “The Great Sorting Out. ” Where he basically describes what will follow up after the triple convergence. Friedman’s main purpose of writing this book is to let people know that globalization has made everyone equal and countries such as India, China and other developing countries have been playing on the same ground as Developed countries all because of technology.
