Reading the Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World is Flat I realized that it prepares us to live in the 21st century. The author explains several “flatteners,” which (if used properly) can help us to create multibillion dollar companies, to get a free or inexpensive education, or to engage communities around the world in open research.
Supply-chaining created companies like Wal-Mart, which itself doesn’t produce anything. These kinds of companies order the right quantities of goods to be produced right at the time they are sold in the store. This type of management allows Wal-Mart to avoid shortages and surpluses to some extent. Innovations in technology in this century allowed us to make China a “next door neighbor” and a perfect supplier for the supply-chaining model. Supply-chaining is not the only “flattener” Friedman discussed. Moreover, some of the “flatteners” are not used in all the markets. If we can look for the markets that can benefit from any of the “flatteners,” we can create completely new business models that can earn us billions of dollars.
Friedman pointed out that open-sourcing and uploading is another “flattener” that already changes the world dramatically. Look at the Wikipedia and open-source software. Both are developed and supported by volunteers; however, free Wikipedia can compete with an expensive Encyclopedia Britannica and free Linux can compete with Windows. I also noticed that open-sourcing made its way to education, which is generally expensive in the U.S. A good example is MIT Open Courseware, a set of MIT course materials that allows any individual on the earth to study any course an MIT student studies on campus independently and for free. MIT is the one of the oldest prestigious and expensive schools in the U.S., yet it just gives away all the study materials that previously were accessible only to students who paid tuition. In contrast, BYU is too conservative to offer all of its materials to everyone. There are class web pages, but they are not organized, and sometimes even password protected (CS235 Lecture Notes page). Humanities Learning Resource Center Online Media is organized pretty well, but is accessible only to BYU students. Another example of open-sourcing influence in education is www.w3schools.com, a set of tutorials about web development.
Open-sourcing not only provides the way to educate ourselves for free but also allows the communities to engage in open research. The results of many studies are published online and accessible to the whole world. This means that any individual or group who wishes to participate in the research can easily get all the data from the previous research and continue researching without having to start from scratch. I imagine someday a high-school student in a third-world country could download the human genome and then answer to the questions scientists were asking around the world.
In conclusion, the “flatteners” Friedman discussed describe globalization in its early stage and prepare us to live in the 21st century. To be successful in this century and to move technological progress ahead we should be aware of many “flatteners,” which could help us to create multibillion dollar companies, to get and provide free and inexpensive education, and to make a breakthrough in research conducted openly around the globe.
