The World Is Flat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see The World Is Flat (disambiguation).

**The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century**

Original 1st edition cover
Author	Thomas L. Friedman
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject(s)	Globalization
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Released	April 5, 2005
Media Type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback) and audio-CD
Pages	488
ISBN	ISBN 0374292884

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is a best-selling book by Thomas L. Friedman analyzing the progress of globalization with an emphasis on the early 21st century. It was first released in 2005 and was later released as an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006.

1 Overview
2 Flatteners
3 Criticism
4 Trivia
5 Editions
6 References
7 External links
- 7.1 Reviews

[edit] Overview

Friedman believes the world is flat in the sense that the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries are leveling. Friedman recounts many examples in which companies in India and China are becoming part of large global complex supply chains that extend across oceans, providing everything from service representatives and X-ray interpretation to component manufacturing. He also describes how these changes are made possible through intersecting technologies, particularly the Internet.

In Chapter 11, "The Unflat World," Friedman discusses his philosophy of history: "I am a technological determinist! . . . I believe that capabilities create intentions. . . . But . . I am not a historical determinist". He notes that there are still three billion people who still live in an "unflat world" unaffected by the technologies and socioeconomic changes, sometimes caused by poverty. He addresses what these three billion people--as well as their governments and the world's businesses--need to do in order to join the "flat world."

[edit] Flatteners

Thomas L. Friedman wrote in his book the ten forces that he recognizes as the major flatteners of the world. He came up with the ten forces to support his thesis of why the world is getting flat. The ten forces are organized in a chronological way. From the earliest since late last century, the Berlin Wall came down, and all the way to the present 21st century, where all the mobile digital devices path the way for even more connections. He presented these forces as connection to globalization of a vastly different world, a flat world.

Flattener #1
11/9/89
When the Walls Came Down and the Windows Went Up

With the fall of Berlin wall in 11/9/89, it was a signal that the world was left with one system. That system is the free-market capitalism way of economics. The communist way of central planning economy was flattened by the fall of Berlin wall and the Soviet Empire. The world works as a seamless whole because everyone is now running on a single system instead of the alternatives. At about the same time Windows 3.0 shipped on May 22, 1990 people become able to communicate with a unified computer platform, the IBM structure. At the same time, Bin Laden saw another alternative to the free-market capitalism. When people began downloading the future, Bin Laden want to upload the pass of religious zeal. This sowed the seeds to 9/11.

Flattener #2
8/9/95
When Netscape Went Public

Netscape came onto the internet scene after earlier phase which millions of PCs sold world wide many equipped with modems. What Netscape brought to the table is an essentially new killer app the browser. From this point forward people will be able to connect to the internet using the browser as their window. Netscape’s first browser could work on an IBM PC, a Macintosh, or a Unix computer. After it’s released in December 1994 Netscape completely dominated the market. The Netscape browser sparked an internet boom. Many investors saw that everything can be digitized: data, inventory, commerce, books, music photos, and entertainment can all be transported and sold on the internet. This eventually led to the dot-com stock bubble and a massive overinvestment in the fiber-optic cable needed to carry all the new digital information. In a period of about five or six years, telecom companies invested about $ 1 trillion n wiring the world. And no one bothered to question demand projections.

Flattener #3
Work Flow Software
Let’s Do Lunch: Have Your Application Talk to My Application

When after the phase of walls came down and Windows and browsers went up to enable people to connect with each other, people started to want more than just browsing and reading emails. They wanted to create, design, shape, sell, buy, and keep track of inventory etc… However at the beginning for example if a within a company, the company is using different software for different departments. Lack of a common platform prevents the department from accessing and receiving the information on different software. They need to become interoperable. Therefore, in the late 1990s companies started to forge more web-based standards. Data description language called XML and protocols like SOAP start to emerge, so files can be exchanged over diverse applications. Other standards start to emerge as well. Friedman noted such that Microsoft Word is such a standard that he could use word in German language version as well. He also mentioned that paypal became a standard payment platform for ebay.

Flattener #4
Open – Sourcing
Self-Organizing Collaborative Communities

Open source is the notion that company or ad hoc groups are making their source code of the program available to down load for any one in the public. Anyone who wishes to contribute to the code to improve it can do so freely, so open source software is constantly being improved by its users and people can use it for free. Brian Behlendorf , who was the original member of the Apache open-source Web server community, wrote patches to NCSA to improve web server program to handle things such as passwords. He and other groups incorporated all the patches they made and released it as what is Apache. IBM later built a patented commercial product called WebSphere on top of Apache code. Apache is now the leading server application powering 2/3 of all the websites across the world. Open-sourcing has morphed into other spheres of communities as well such as bloggers as open-source intelligence gathering. Others such as wikipedia as a user contributed encyclopedia. Microsoft believes you need to pour in significant amount of money for R&D to really achieve breakthrough innovation in software.

Flattener #5
Outsourcing
Y2K

India benefited from the fiber cable overcapacity and China to a lesser degree. India created a talented pool of engineers and scientist in computer science, and other fields through their state found IIT (India Institute of Technology). India really got it’s break with the Y2K bug affecting huge numbers of existing computers. To remedy the Y2K bug from computers was a huge and tedious task, Indian IT industry became well known because the sheer number of Indian IT workers allowedthem to perform this Y2K work. After dot com bubble imploded many engineers from India went home, and American companies who became resource conscientious contacted Indians to get jobs done for less money.

Flattener #6
Offshoring
Running with Gazelles, Eating with Lions

China joined WTO on December 11, 2001. In 1977, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping opened up its tightly controlled economy to the world. Many foreign companies set up shops in China wanting to sell equivalent of 1 billion pairs of underwear to the Chinese. Chinese government were able to restrict the penetration of western companies with various barriers. Many people began to see the advantage of the Chinese labor pool including many Chinese abroad, so they began to set up factories in China to produce goods to sell to the rest of the world. Since China joined WTO, it has agreed to international regulations and guarantees the economic rights of many companies operating on its shores. Desipite fears to the contrary, China is not simply racing everyone to the buttom with lax labor laws and low wages known as the China price. Productivity and quality has steadily increased over the years. During these years China has lost 15 million jobs in manufacturing while gaining in other sectors. Japan’s economy was on the way back in 2003 due to largely economic ties with China. China has replaced the US as the largest trading partner of Japan. Companies with offshoring factories in China in turn do more business back home in American factories with Chinese produced parts.

Flattener #7
Supply – Chaining
Eating Sushi in Arkansas

“Supply-Chaining is a method of collaborating horizontally – among suppliers, retailers, and customers – to create value.”( p. 129) Supply chaining is enabled by the flatten world, however it is also a major flattener itself. The more supply chaining the more standards the world is going to adopt and in term the flatter the world becomes. Wal-Mart is hugely successful because of the efficient supply chaining that flows like a river from factory to store to customer. Wal-Mart buys direct from the manufacture to cut costs and set up distribution centers to distribute to Wal-Mart all over the country. Technology is often used to improve the efficiency of the chain. Computer databases track store sales and inventories and developed a network to share the information with suppliers. The just-in-time inventory program is utilized to reduce excess inventory. Wal-Mart even replace bar codes with microchip that has radio frequency to identify its products. Wal-Mart is notorious for offshoring jobs to other countries like China. However Wal-Mart CEO believes that American companies deserted the manufacturing process to avoid the responsibilities of buildings and employees.

Flattener #8
Insourcing
What the Guys in Funny Borwn Shorts Are Really Doing

“The company founded in Seattle in 1907 as a messenger service has reinvented itself as a dynamic supply-chain manager.” (p. 142) UPS developed a system of insourcing which many different types of businesses that insource part of the job such as repairing Toshiba computers, or shipping out various commercial products like Nike shoes from the UPS warehouse. UPS performs these functions so that the various companies can save some cost from operating the warehouse and distribution centers. UPS will come inside of your business and analyze your supply chain and then design a logistic to handle all of your businesses’ product distribution and manufacturing supplies. UPS maintains a think tank that works on supply chain algorithms. This mathematics is called “package flow technology”, and it tracks all the deployments of transportations and the flow of packages around the world. The key to the math is how you optimize the supply chain. On any given day 2% of the world’s GDP can be found on UPS’ delivery trucks. UPS also took advantage of the internet flattener which allow its customers to track their packages on the internet. This also saves UPS money.

Flattener # 9
In – Forming
Google, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search

No matter who accessed the search engine, whether a kid or a professor, all have same overall research information. This is a huge equalizer and therefore a major flattening force of the world. Google is currently available to search in one hundred languages. In – forming is the personal empowerment to build your own supply chain. A chain that supplies knowledge, information, and entertainment, you can become a self – directed researcher, editor without going to the library or any place. The information is right at your fingertip. Google’s success business model is the founder’s realization they can build a targeted advertising model that is relevant to your personal search on the web. TV broadcast or any kind of broadcast does not give you precise numbers when someone is watching or interested in your commercials. People can also google your personal information on the web, so there is no place to hide.

Flattener #10
The Steroids
Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual

The computer processing power has grown multiple times over the years from .06 MIPS to Pentium 4 that has maximum 1080 MIPS. It also has many times of the transistors as to before. Storage of the computer also has grown. For example an ipod with 40 GB storage can be sold cheaply that a teenager could afford. Company like Skype, that gives VoIP save companies like Eriksen Translations Inc. thousands of dollars in phone bills. The ubersteroid is that makes it all mobile. Wireless will allow you to connect to the internet, access email from many different devices. “The natural state of communication s is wireless,” argued Alan Cohen. You can travel from areas to areas with data connection just like you would with cell phone connections. All of these steroids will give a boost to all the other flattener forces, so they can perform at an even higher level.

[edit] Criticism

The central image of the book―the "flat" world―has been criticized by The Economist as an "inaccurate and empty image"^[1] that does not suit Friedman's own argument. While Friedman points out that the world is increasingly inter-connected, his image may suggest the opposite, as a flat world would be harder to navigate than a spherical one. However, Friedman more likely meant the metaphor to imply the "playing field is flat" in the competitive sense.

There has also been criticism of Friedman's use of the flat earth theory in his book. Friedman perpetuates the myth that Christopher Columbus set out to prove the world was round, while his contemporaries believed it was flat and that his ships would sail off the edge of the Earth. This false idea was begun by a biography of Columbus written by Washington Irving, and many have felt that Friedman should know better. However, even some critics of the Columbus reference have still been subject to the popular myth of the flat-earth era. The well-respected publication 'The Economist', in a review of Friedman's book, stated incorrectly that "Mr Friedman claims that this proved Columbus's thesis that the world is round. It did nothing of the kind. Proof that the world is round came only in 1522, when the sole surviving ship from Ferdinand Magellan's little fleet returned to Spain."^[1] In actuality, few people in 1492 believed the Earth to be flat.

Peak oil advocate James Howard Kunstler believes that the globalization model supported by Thomas Friedman is a "false doctrine" because it relies on cheap oil and implies a growth of its use, and in a century to be sealed by future oil depletion and global warming it is neither sustainable nor desirable.^[2].

Friedman's book is now assigned reading in some college classrooms, including The University of Michigan, Emmanuel College, The College of Wooster, Case Western Reserve University, California Polytechnic State University, Florida International University, Vanderbilt University, Texas State University and the University of Maryland.

Friedman is right that China might now be weary to attack Taiwan in fear that it will suffer the consequences of the economic backlash. Friedman’s theory of the global supply chain includes Taiwan’s high tech manufacturing capabilities that well supply China’s manufacturing process known as the silicon shield. History has shown for many times that economic dependence does not resolve potential wars. Before WWII people thought because of the interdependence between Germany and Britain that there will never be another war. This argument of economic inhibits belligerence dates all the way back.

Friedman also does not compelling rebuttal for Harvard’s Michael Sandel, who calls the horizontal collaboration in the book “just a nice name for the ability to hire cheap labor in India.” In the example that the book gives, India with it’s vast man power and technical know how was able to take on the tedious, and huge Y2K bug fix. This gave India a surge in the IT business that Friedman calls the second independence Day. However this could be seem as easily as a sign of dependence. The dependence of relying on the jobs that American no longer want, we can not predict the long term geopolitical consequences of having emerging powers reliant on scraps form the American economic table.

Friedman does not to appear spend much time outside of golf courses, five star hotels or restaurants, and limousines. His view of the flat world consists citizens of elites he interviews on his journey. The chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies, Mexican ex-presidents, U.S. secretaries of state and military generals, Japanese financial consultants and Indian and Chinese ministers of trade inhibits in his version of the flat world. The other voices are not heard from such as farmers, factory workers and street vendors. These people are not presented in the text, which may tell a very different story of poverty, hunger and disease.

[edit] Trivia

The book was first published with a jacket that bore a painting, called "I Told You So", depicting a sailing vessel falling off the edge of the world. The week the book came out it was learned that the publisher had not obtained the artist's permission to use the painting. Farrar, Straus and Giroux printed a new cover using an image of the earth literally flattened like a coin from the Corbis stock photography library. In an interesting twist, because the book had rocketed to the top of the nonfiction New York Times Best Seller list, the new cover also includes the text "National Bestseller", something common for paperbacks but highly unusual for first edition hardbound covers.