“It Is a Flat World” by Thomas L. Friedman

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Thomas L. Friedman in his article ‘It’s a Flat World’ points out that when the people almost thought that the globalization was over and it was a failed story, the technology and geo-economics got together effectively to redesign the lives of people. It so occurred to the author that the people of the first world were in stupor when the world was being flattened and shrunk by the massive growth of information technology. The greater investments in the information technology during the last two decades pave way to shorten the distance between the farthest destinations of the world. The establishment of broadband connectivity around the world with the aid of the undersea cables and the global convenience of computer as a cheap gadget “have created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital which could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again — and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature” (Friedman 2005).

This big twist has enabled countries like India and China to compete globally in knowledge work and information technology more than ever before. Tsoukas (1997) assumes that when a society can easily access the wealth of information, any one in such society can act as a knowledgeable contributor who could carryout informed responsible actions. This was the newly found flexibility among the enthusiastic and skilled work force of the third world. It enabled them to seek “where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how I, can on my own, collaborate with others globally” (Friedman 2005). Such an incredible aspect of drawing all the knowledge pool of the world together was, further explains Friedman, a an initiative empowering the youngsters in Bangalore, Romania, Soviet Union or Vietnam to use all the information and tools for the application of knowledge as they need and as they please.

The innovation in a flat world could be emerged from any corner of it as the world would turn out to be one dominated by intelligent machines (Rifkin 1995). In other words, the people to people and application to application connectivity that was established by the Information Technology was a multipurpose innovation that enabled companies to collaborate and share knowledge with each other for better productivity based on the quality (Friedman 2005). The distinguished degree of technologies called ‘general purpose technologies’ were always causes of increased productivity and immense changes in the world. Such technologies include steam engine, Electricity in 1890s and Information Technologies in 1990s (Brinjolfsson and Hitt 1998).

Friedman (2005) talks about the 10 events that contributed to the swift evolution the world goes through at the moment. The fall of Berlin wall in 1989 was one move that gave a message of new cooperation and flexibility to people around the world. The windows 3.0 which enabled the network connectivity were also introduced in the market during the same year. Furthermore, Netscape went public in the year 1995, giving the society with a new competent browser and simultaneously driving a dot com boom by their stock offering in the market. “Netscape moment connected people to people like never before, what the workflow revolution did was connect applications to applications so that people all over the world could work together in manipulating and shaping words, data and images on computers like never before” (Friedman 2005).

This move, however, gave a new notion to the productivity beyond the orientation of counting things using a check list. The productivity so far was considered to be the amount of products produced at the lower cost. On the other hand, the new Information Technology investors invested aiming at a new productivity regulating an economic boom based on customer service and quality of products and service (Brinjolfsson and Hitt 1997). Such expectations were effectively addressed with the following events of this rapid evolution. Outsourcing is the first among these components which helps, according to Friedman (2005), any organization to digitize and disaggregate all their information in order to carry it any other place in the world electronically. Then, the off shoring by which even an entire company could be sent to a new country. Thirdly, open sourcing where the work force would come together from different areas online to work together on a same software development project. It could also be followed by an action of in sourcing that enables another company to come into an organization and take care of all the logistic applications. Another component was supply chains which enable company to sell a product in North America, while the same product, at the same time, is produced and replaced by a manufacturer in china. Finally the last, component in this new found collaborative measure is informing that is through the search engines such as Google and yahoo (Friedman 2005).

The flattening and shrinking effects of these events were, in fact, predicted by scholars in earlier times. Malone (1997) has foreseen this dramatic structuring of the IT organisations in the future. Firms as they get technologically rich were to move towards more flat and less hierarchical organisations so that increasing levels of decision making responsibility could be entrusted to highly skilled labours (Drucker 1998). Brinjolfsson and Hitt (1998 p8) attribute all these possibilities to the “low cost communication and information possibilities created by the Information Technology”.

Mentioning the first three flatteners to be the platform for cooperation and the following six to be the ways of collaboration, Friedman (2005) moves to the last one called ‘the steroids’. He explains the steroids to be the devices used for wireless access and voice over internet as they enable any one to act from anywhere in the flat world. He confirms that by 2000when all of these components got together the world turned out to be flat. According to Thomson (1995) the communication has gained a “despatialized simultaneity” after the telecommunication technology came into being. “It is now possible for one to experience events as simultaneous without being close to where they happen. In a society of generalized communication the world tends to be experienced as information, namely as a collection of codified, abstract, de-contextualized representations” (Tsoukas 1997).

Friedman (2005) claims that Information Technology Revolution that has been published pompously during the last two decade was only a trailer as the activities during those years have set the stage for the real revolution that is effectively beginning now. It has already been cemented by Brinjolfsson and Hitt (1998) when they suggested that in the coming decade, though already equipped with the Information Technology, these “decentralized and empowered organisations’ will start reaping the fruits of the inexpensive information technology.

The contemporary steroids of the Information Technology, however, make the communication flawless beyond all the paradoxes of communication. As Tsoukas (1997) puts it as the face to face communication needs to be the primary and effective mode of communication. Therefore, the development of communication media provides a sense of fabricated nature in the communication. Whereas, the information technology successfully have overcome this hindrance to communication with the efficient global-video conferencing system with which a CEO could hold a “could hold a virtual meeting of the key players from its entire global supply chain for any project at any time” (Friedman 2005).

Concerned over the future prospects of the world leaders, Friedman (2005) reiterates that “there is nothing that guarantees that Americans or Western Europeans will continue leading the way. These new players are stepping onto the playing field legacy free, meaning that many of them were so far behind that they can leap right into the new technologies without having to worry about all the sunken costs of old systems. It means that they can move very fast to adopt new”. The possible remedy, as far as Friedman is concerned, not restricting the possibilities of the Information Technology or mourning over outsourcing but instead develop skills and productivity. Throughout the article Friedman develop this argument and finally puts the point forward which suggest the information technology and the globalization to be a potential threat for the developed world and its economy. He further puts forward the best ways to address the issue of flatism, saying that “meeting the challenges of flatism requires as comprehensive, energetic and focused a response as did meeting the challenge of Communism. It requires a president who can summon the nation to work harder, get smarter, attract more young women and men to science and engineering and build the broadband infrastructure, portable pensions and health care that will help every American become more employable in an age in which no one can guarantee you lifetime employment” (Friedman 2005).

However, at this instance the observation requires a much deeper comprehension. Overcoming this crisis may not be striving to be just another player in the crisis rather striving to realize the limitations of information and gaining knowledge beyond the information by hard work and innovation. For example, Brinjolfsson and Hitt (1998) points out that the top management intents to exploit the new flexible machinery available and, most interestingly, when the management tried to entrust the off shore workers with key decision makings they were found to be hardly interested in getting involved with vital decisions concerned with the partnering firms.

Overall, the industrial and economic world with their global market is being levelled into the concept of a global village. It was a quick transformation that many people did not even realise while the basic process of business and economy was changing. It is a challenge to adapt and survive in the new face of the world and it is possible only with tireless work and innovation. Friedman provides a self provoking thought and he successfully manages to invite people to understand the contemporary economy and to prepare oneself to be an active player in this new word at the earliest.

References

Brynjolfsson, E. and Hitt, L., 1997 Computing productivity: Are Computers Pulling Their Weight?, MIT and Wharton Working Paper.

Brinjolfsson, E. and Hitt, L.,1998 Beyond the Productivity Paradox Computers are the Catalyst of Bigger Changes Fourth communication of the ACM

Drucker, F., 1988 The Coming of the New Organization. Harvard Business Review, 66: 45-53.

Friedman, T., 2005 It’s a Flat World after all New York Times Online. Web.

Malone, T., 1997 Is Empowerment Just a Fad?, Sloan Management Review, 38, 2,

Thompson, B., 1995 The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Polity Press, Cambridge, p. 55.

Rifkin, J,. 1995 The End of Work. J. P. Tarcher/Putnam, New York

Tsoukas, H,.1997 The Tyranny of Light Futures, Vol. 29, No. 9, pp. X27-843, 1997

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“It Is a Flat World” by Thomas L. Friedman

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