When watching the “World is flat” video I found it to be quite interesting. The 10 flatteners that Friedman discussed were eye opening, especially when he talked about UPS owning almost everything! When he started to go though each flattener and mentioned that the world was flat, I felt he was talking about everyone in the world being equal. The taking down of the Berlin Wall and the internet boom are signs that point to people becoming equal with everyone. Anyone can go anywhere now with the internet, I could take a tour of Ireland today and later tonight get a tour of England. The world is at everyone’s fingertips who is able to own or get use of a computer. The internet has grouped a wide variety of people from rich to poor, high society to lower economic, all races, religions, and cultures into one large group. The toppling of the Berlin Wall took one country that was divided and made it whole again. No one saw others as being lower than they were but instead as equals. These two flatteners were thoughts that stuck in my head after watching the video. That is what I thought of when Friedman was speaking of times that changed our lives.
I completely agree with you about the UPS thing. That really stuck with me because I thought that is such an innovative business model. When I was at RIT in New York I learned a lot about Xerox and the totally non paper/copier stuff they are doing. Companies are really diversifying because they are afraid that their industry (paper, shipping, etc.) is going to die.
ReplyDeleteI know, I love the UPS story too. I also use the Doctor stories a lot with my students. One day we have doctors here in the United States racking up over 200K in college bills and there are doctors in other countries willing to work for 30K a year and do the same exact thing as US doctors would for about 150K less. It is scary to think but also exciting at the same time. There are so many jobs today that exist because of the internet even in our own country. So what do we do? I guess just jump in with both feet and do what other companies do, diversify our knowledge and hope there will be jobs for us too! I hope computers do not replace us teachers! :) Remember to add links to your posts to make them more interactive!
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