The World is Flat –
No Kidding! It is! Barack Obama and John McCain are you listening? Have you read this book?
This is my new favorite book. It is written by Thomas L. Friedman, who writes for the NY Times. He explains how society is now in a great, all encompassing transition which he calls globalization. The flat world is his metaphor for globalization. In this book, he first outlines 10 forces that have flattened the world. Briefly these are: Berlin Wall comes down (’89), the WWW goes public (’95), development of Work Flow software, Uploading develops (‘90s), Outsourcing, Offshoring, Supply-Chaining, Insourcing(small companies manage global supplies), In-forming (search engines mushroom), and Personal connectedness (digital, mobile, personal and virtual). He then goes on to describe the implications of this new flat world without walls on society. There will be no room for isolationists. American businesses will be offshoring and outsourcing work to the unlikeliest of places (Bangalore, India?) and will need well trained workers from whatever country they come from.
The part I was keenly interested in was the impact on our education system. The need for the US education system to come to terms with the fact that we are no longer an agrarian society. Our school calendars have not been updated to reflect this major change in the US. School districts are using the same school calendar that has been in place for 200 years. This calendar allows children the summer months off to help with the crops. Crops! The urban and suburban kids I know don’t know what a crop is let alone how to harvest one. The need for creative thinkers in a flat world is a point made abundantly clear in Friedman’s book. We will have computers to do the basic calculations but we will need humans to creatively look at the information and come up with new solutions to business and manufacturing problems.
Friedman’s chapters on health and social security reform are enlightening. This is to be continued as I am still reading the book.
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