In class on Monday, we watched a lecture by Thomas Friedman at MIT about his book The World is Flat 3.0 and discussed the ideas behind the book itself and the argument that it is putting forward claiming that the world is indeed flat. But after pondering this question for a while, I began to question if the claim that the world is becoming flatter is actually true.
From an economic point of view, the world is not flat as there are many countries in the world that are not near the same level as economic growth as countries like China are. But what about from another viewpoint? Say technology? With the advent of the internet, the laptop and Web 2.0, one could easily agree with the statement that Friedman is saying n that the world is flat. For the first time in history individuals are on the same playing field when it comes to sharing ideas and information. A person in Russia can send a report to a client in Canada which can then be sent back to Russia in less than a second. This growth in technology is what gave rise to Friedman's idea. But are all aspects of the world flattening?
The answer to this would obviously be no. Agriculture, manufacturing, and food production have stayed the same relatively due to geographic and political situations in countries. But things such as education and business have been flattened from a technological standpoint. For example, we mentioned in class that Stanford University allowed 30,000 people to take a class on-line for free. It is examples like this that prove that the world is flattening in some regards. Business is now being done at lightening speed and ideaa are being shared among individuals who previously had no way of presening information to others.
All in all, the world is flattening to an extent. Is it completely flat? No. Is it flattening in ways that were thought to be impossible years ago? Yes. Will it be completely fat in the years to come? Only time will tell that.
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