The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

Sunmade A.

Order the writing of a tailor-made Modern history Essay

Free quote online

Essay Format .doc

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

Download

Read an extract

Reader
Abstract
Contents
Extract

Abstract

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman provides the author's views on the development of the world since the late 1990s. The central thesis provided by Friedman is that the world is becoming flat. When Friedman makes this assertion, he is not attempting to argue that the world is losing its round shape; rather when Friedman makes the observation that the world is flat, he is referring to the fact that the proliferation of technology in the world has created a situation in which all societies are beginning to look like the West. As such India, China and many other foreign countries are losing their cultural dimensions as the world begins to develop into a technologically homogeneous culture that makes the world seem flat: "The global competitive playing field was being leveled. The world was being flattened"

In an effort to prove his thesis, Friedman makes a number of observations about the changes that have taken place as a result of the proliferation of technology and communications.
The process of opening up former-Soviet nations had a profound impact on the world.
The third force for global flattening has been the development of work flow software.
While out sourcing and off shoring have proven to be quite important to the profitability of many multinational organizations, Friedman also notes the importance of supply-chaining.
The final two issues that Friedman covers in his text are in-forming and amplifying technologies.

Get this table of contents for free after login.

Extract

[...] Out sourcing, according to Friedman, became a popular practice in 1999, when the threat of Y2K forced many organizations to send their programming work overseas. Through this process, organizations came to realize the significant cost savings that could be incurred through this process. In time, outsourcing in all areas of the organization became a central means for improving the profitability of the organization. As domestic organizations began to move their operations abroad, foreign countries have been inundated with Western culture and the further proliferation and infiltration of technology. [...]

[...] The first force that Friedman notes as pertinent to the flattening of the world is the fall of the Berlin wall. When communism fell in the late 1980s, the impact on the international community was quite stunning. Former communist countries that had been all but excluded from the international free market, now had to find ways to develop such that they could actively participate in the international economy. For Russia and many other Eastern European nations, the switch from communism to capitalism took place in a rapid fashion as former-communist regimes opened up their countries to the free market. [...]

[...] As the international community began to expand through the use of a common technology—i.e. the Internet—Friedman argues that open sourcing became quite prevalent in the late 1990s. According to Friedman, open sourcing refers to the exchange of information and ideas through the Internet. Because of the proliferation of Internet technology, individuals and organizations from all over the world found a common medium in which to share information. As information began to proliferate, so too did new ideas on how to manage and operate the modern organization. [...]

doc