The World is flat by Thomas L.
Friedman (a multi-awarded writer-journalist),
is an international bestselling and interesting book written and published by
himself, analyzing and describing globalization and the brief history of the
twenty-first century. A very intriguing
topic for our final exam’s case study report for this relates me as a student
and as a Call Center agent, very interesting topic for this correlates on where
we are now and why the Philippines is said to leapfrog to the 16th
spot being the world’s largest economy by 2050.
Knowing the history of
globalization is indeed interesting for me for without this technological and
economic transition, I, together with those who are active employees in the BPO
industry, as well as those who have been a part of a BPO company, might have
not experienced or enjoyed the benefits that this job has provided, if this
thing was not realized and was not bring outsourced and overseas., the main
reason why I was fueled to write a review and or interpretation on the work of Thomas
Friedman, a case study report assigned by Prof. Battung.
His
books, including this one - THE WORLD IS FLAT; a
brief history of the 21st Century, was given honorary
distinctions for it bravely explains the world facing us. Here, he illustrated
and defined the world as “flat” because technology and collaborative economies
have created an entirely new playing field. His book aims to change all our
theories on economics, politics and job. His book accordingly will increase
competition and require not only an emphasis on new skills sets but a much more
self-reliant, creative and innovative mindset.
While the author often times
uses the style of mixing metaphors and analogies (that often confuses his readers), he does however meant to educate
the world and his readers about what is exactly happening beyond the sight of
our very own eyes. Thus, for him, the flattening of the world means we are now
connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single
global network which has the possibility of ushering in an amazing era of
prosperity and innovation. A very good example of this was the shift from
manual labor skilled to skilled labor moving overseas.
In his
flat world, any activity that can be digitize and decompose the value chain
will be moved overseas. For example, Many CAT scans done in the U.S. hospitals
are being sent and analyzed by doctors in India and Australia, thus, Medical
transcription job was created and employed thousands of people around the world.
Tax returns are done in India making $100 a month and Inbound and outbound
calls from companies like Dell, GE, SAP and MICROSOFT are being transferred
directly to India and China. This is why Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or the “Call Center” industry as
well as Home Sourcing (moving jobs from
Office to Home) became in-demand nowadays, because these companies are not
only saving millions on the lower cost, but they are also getting a better
quality of workers and increase in work efficiency.
Globalization
3.0
is his other term for this piece, as accordingly technology has taken in this
era and which brought globalization to the next level. Prior to this book, His
book “The Lexus
and the Olive Tree” illustrates and defines the beginning of
globalization where he state that the first era of globalization begins in 1942
and lasted ‘till 1800. The second era lasted from 1800 to 2000 where
multinational companies changed the landscape and shrunk the world from medium
to small despite the great depression the World Wars 1 & 2 together with
the Cold War brought us. While the first and the second eras were driven by
Europe and America, this new era is now being driven by non-Western, non-White
countries like China and India.
In this book, he also cited
ways on how his countrymen can and must do to level up their skills becoming
more competitive and employable under the so called “flat world”, as everyone
around the globe are given equal chance to a fair and just employment processes.
He reiterates the real meaning of the phrase “The World is Flat” to mean global competitive playing field is
being leveled., thus, it is now possible for more people than ever to
collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different
kinds of job from more different corners of the planet and in a more equal
footing than at any previous time in the history of the world.
The Author believes that this
“flattening” of the world is the result of ten factors: Flattener 1 – 11/9/89, “Collapse
of the Berlin Wall”. This is a discussion about the Berlin Wall coming down, the
"fall" of communism, and the impact that Windows powered PCs
(personal computers) had on the ability of individuals to create their own
content and connect to one another. At that point, the basic platform for the
revolution to follow was created: IBM PC, Windows, a standardized graphical
interface for word processing, dial-up modems, a standardized tool for
communication, and a global phone network. Flattener 2 – 8/9/95, “The new age of Connectivity: When the Web
went around and Netscape went public”. Netscape went
public at the price of $28. Netscape and the Web broadened the audience for the
Internet from its roots as a communications medium used primarily by
"early adopters and geeks" to something that made the Internet
accessible to everyone from five-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. The
digitization that took place meant that everyday occurrences such as words,
files, films, music, and pictures could be accessed and manipulated on a
computer screen by all people across the world.
Flattener 3 – “Workflow Software”. This is what
Friedman called the "Genesis moment of the flat world." For he
believes these first three forces have become a "crude foundation of a
whole new global platform for collaboration." There was an emergence of
software protocols (SMTP – simple mail transfer protocol; HTML – the language
that enabled anyone to design and publish documents that could be transmitted
to and read on any computer anywhere) Standards on Standards. Flattener
4 – “Uploading”.
The
stage which he consider as the most disrupted force of all. Users have
come up in uploading and collaborating for and on online projects. The
stage where open source software,
blogs, and Wikipedia was introduced
in the public. Flattener 5 – “Outsourcing”. He argues that
outsourcing has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities
into components which can be subcontracted and performed in the most efficient,
cost-effective way. This process became easier with the mass distribution of
fiber optic cables during the introduction of the World Wide Web.
Flattener 6 – “Offshoring”. The internal
relocation of a company's manufacturing or other processes to a foreign land to
take advantage of less costly operations there. China's entrance in the WTO
(World Trade Organization) allowed for greater competition in the playing
field. Flattener
7 – “Supply
Chaining”. The author compares the modern retail supply chain to a
river, and points to Wal-Mart as the best
example of a company using technology to streamline item sales, distribution,
and shipping. Flattener 8 – “Insourcing”. To
further describe what he meant by this level, He uses United Postal Service
(UPS) as his prime example for insourcing, in which the company's
employees perform services (beyond shipping)
for another company. For example, UPS repairs Toshiba computers on behalf of
Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub, by UPS employees.
Flattener 9 – “Informing”. In
this level, he uses Google and other search engines as his prime examples,
for he stated that the growth of search engines is tremendous. He quoted that
"Never before in the history of the planet have so many people – on their
own – had the ability to find so much information about so many things and
about so many other people.” Flattener 10 – “The Steroids”. The
level where introduction of Wireless, Voice over Internet, and file sharing is made
accessible to everyone. Personal digital devices like mobile phones, iPods,
personal digital assistants, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), as well as the introduction of Digital, Mobile,
Personal and Virtual – all analog content and processes (from entertainment to
photography and to word processing) can be digitized and therefore shaped,
manipulated and transmitted. These processes can be done at high speed with
total ease that can be done anywhere, anytime by anyone.
Few has reacted and thrown
commentaries about this award winning piece written by himself, these comments
are often regarded to Friedman’s views and styles which he often used on his
books, which accordingly is somewhat confusing. Among them was Matt Taibbi
who specifically said that "Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you
couldn't make them up even if you were trying – and when you tried to actually
picture the 'illustrative' figures of speech he offered to explain himself,
what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges
school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced
banana peels of his literary endeavors”.
As
a student and as a full time Call Center Agent, I don’t mind looking into these
things – on how good a writer is in expressing his thoughts and opinions with
the use of any figurative language styles. For me, as long as the writer is
able to deliver the message that he is trying to convey, he is good and effective
enough. And summarizing Mr. Friedman’s work and his contributions in nation
building and educating not only his countrymen, but the readers of his works worldwide,
I can say that he was able to portray and deliver what he exactly intended to,
for writing and publishing this book.
This book (THE WORLD IS FLAT; A brief history of the 21st
Century) is great especially for those people who are until this
very time is wondering as to why we have contact centers, how are they
developed and what exactly are their contribution to local and global economy.
The same thing applies to the masses’ common questions about the rapid changes
in technology such as the billions of manufactured high end devices like
smartphones, which was made so powerful for it is being installed and
programmed with more features like applications, games, even the introduction
of spreadsheet and other programs which allows all users to access their office
documents even at the convenience of their home. Another great feature that
everyone loves the most is the introduction of Wi-Fi or internet access on
their mobile phones, where everyone else can easily access the worldwide web
and phish for the information they needed. Given a chance to rate the work, I
will give it a hundred percent approval and will surely recommend it to all the
people I know, especially to students taking economy class as this book will
help them fully understand the essence of globalization, its evolution and its
important contributions to the rising economy of one’s nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment