Friedman's flat world

Here's your cliff notes . . .
Thomas Friedman addressed the National Governors Association in Des Moines, Iowa recently. In an animated presentation, he talked about his thesis that "The World is Flat." (Amazon.com reviews his book here). See also "Valin's" long post and comments following it.

Here are some of the main points and themes that I took from watching his keynote speech to the assembled governors, broadcast on C-Span.
Globalization has been led by three different constituencies.

1. From 1492 to the early 1800's, countries explored and made connections around the world. Ironically, earlier sailors operated at their exploratory beginnings under the prevailing wisdom that they would fall off the horizon if they sailed too far out, i.e. the world is flat, not round.
2. Companies led globalization from the early 1800's to the year 2000. The flattening constituencies now consisted of smaller units.
3. Friedman posits that, from 2000 to the present, individuals, you and I - consituencies of one, lead in making the global connections of the flat world.

Friedman cited "world flatteners," a few events in the last few decades:

• Nov. 9, 1989: The Berlin wall fell and Microsoft Windows arrived on the scene.
• Aug. 9, 1995: Netscape went public with the first Internet browser. During this period there were open standards for web development, leading to the "dot.com boom and bubble." The mountains of money available made possible the fiber optic "accidental wiring of the world, connecting Bethesda and Bangalore," according to Friedman. This drove down the cost of internet world connectivity to almost free.
• In the late 1990's workflow became the next flattener. Software became interoperable, for all practical purposes.

Friedman's flat world thesis suggests several markers, what he calls "genesis moments setting the new platforms for flat world collaboration."

1. outsourcing - of work to remote locations away from the company
2. off-shoring -move the plant out of the US and integrate it into another country's economy.
3. open-sourcing - programmers collaborated in open source form to write new OS language, pure peer-reviewed science loved by geeks like Linux and FireFox, the open source web browser.
4. supply-chaining - one of the key elements in the Walmart success, that depends on an elaborate communication system that closely manages the vendor/Walmart/customer interface.
5. in-sourcing - the example the speaker used here is UPS' "we come to you" strategy; where a customer's electronics equipment is picked up, transported, then repaired at a central UPS hub by UPS technicians, then returned to the customer.
6. informing - I manage my own data via examples Google's search engine and the TIVO device.
7. the "steroids" - examples include wireless technology, sending voice over the internet, gameboy-like devices for business. Friedman characterized these as "turbochargers for all the collaborators."

The author maintains that from 2000 to the present, all ten (I have included 7) of his "flatteners" worked together, converging to make the platform flat. He feels that now we all must adapt our habits to this new platform, so that we are comfortably using these new practices. The example he used is my making airline reservations, then printing out my own ticket and boarding pass at home before the flight.

From the year 2000 to the present, these monumental things happened:

1. Three billion people from China, India and the former Soviet Union joined the world economy. Today, for example, there is debate about China's exchange rate. According to this AP article, China may revalue its currency, though this may not come until later in the year.
2. But then the "political perfect storm," happened, according to Friedman. These events - 9/11, Enron, the dot.com busts, etc., - disguising the flattening world.

He closes with this, "nobody's told the kids this information yet." With this book, he's telling us all.