week 5 : 31 october
Highlights From Student Posts
[back to week 5 ]
- Barrie
- It's interesting to be commenting on Howard Rheingold's commentary on Postman's ten principles. I talked to Rheingold for an hour on the telephone once, and it was the conversational equivalent of Chinese food: when we hung up, I couldn't remember anything he'd said. It's as likely that it was my fault as his, but not much has changed.
- Belle
- I think what Friedman meant by “the flat world” is the process people removing the obstacles in politics and economics, moreover, increasing people's communications...
Bill Gates explains the meaning of this transformation best. Thirty years ago, he tells Friedman, if you had to choose between being born a genius in Mumbai or Shanghai and an average person in Poughkeepsie , you would have chosen Poughkeepsie because your chances of living a prosperous and fulfilled life were much greater there. ''Now,'' Gates says, ''I would rather be a genius born in China than an average guy born in Poughkeepsie .''
Wow~ So surprised. We always seek every chance we have in our lives. But in the flat world, it seems that globalization only push us to face more competitions. The third world is a broad and blooming market or a competitive and cruel battlefield? Who really get benefit during the process of globalization?
- I think what Friedman meant by “the flat world” is the process people removing the obstacles in politics and economics, moreover, increasing people's communications...
- Chloe
- Although I think that technologies will allow people have more convenient life and bring a lot of benefits, I still agree Postman's "Ten Principles of Technology”- new technology sometimes destroys more than it creates.
- Courtney
- Friedman discusses WalMart as the principal innovator in balancing reliability and low cost. This balancing act attends to both product selection and product delivery. On the product selection end, WalMart has standardized the products in homes across America. Viva solidarity through limited consumer selection. We can all have the standard-issue toaster, the standard-issue romance novel and the non-scandalous rap CDs: From Arkansas to West Virginia. Hallelujah. (Please pardon the cynicism; the mid-term election rhetoric from the weekend is still ringing in my ears.) Thanks to the Pottery Barns and Banana Republics, even the upper-middle class can mimic interior designs on a more elevated schedule.
- Elina
- I do agree with Friedman that the economy has "leveled the playing field" on a worldwide scale between countries and organizations of once disparate capabilities. The structure of U.S. economy is partly out-sourcing for human labor and intelligence from countries like India, Vietnam, Taiwan, and China, due to low cost and high productivity.
- Jeanne
- no post
- Kai-Chen
- Seven years ago, when I was a high school student, I had a bad vacation with my family in China….Muck, backwardness but a huge crowds people anywhere are the first impression of China for me. In the past few years, I heard about the accelerating development of China a lot, but I didn't want to go to China again at all. Nowadays, I cannot but face the new situation that China has been becoming a huge dragon in Asia marketplace-almost nothing is not “made in China”!! China has become the biggest Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM); within ten years, it may grow into Original Design Manufacturer (ODM).
- Kevin
- Aha, said the reader - to number 5 of Rheingold's top 10! The notion that new technology is an ecology - not merely adding but changing everything. There's some truth to this, even as there is conflict among new and old technologies and the emergence of new social systems as the result of new technologies.
- Kristina
- I apparently have been sleeping for the last decade or so. Or maybe, as Friedman suggests, the triple convergence that most CEOs now understand, is being kept a big secret. The walls, ceilings and floors are gone. But we still haven't even begun to see what this convergence is capable of in this "flattened" world. Friedman says that up until now we have been in the process of creating tools to collaborate and connect. Now the real IT revolution can begin. Companies will need to find ways to work together and combine technologies to compete and innovate in a global business economy.
- Luke
- I'm prompted to wonder if Kathy's choice of divvying up Chapter 2 between groups is to see if we would all merge upon the same interpretation of Friedman's 'flat world'. He seems to be rather fanatic in sporting his personal terminology all over the text...and in cascadingly context-savy circumstances wherein you might think you hadn't a clue what the hell he meant unless you'd read chapter 1 word for word.
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Magnus
- no post
- Mini
- Just take Postman's words “All technological change is a Faustian bargain.” for example, Faust is a person who traded his soul to devil in exchange fro knowledge from the legend. Therefore, what Postman said is that what technologies bring to this world is to sacrifice anything to satisfy a limitless desire for knowledge or power. In my opinion, I cannot agree it all. However, it points out the impact to human beings.
- Nancy
- So I emailed my nephew, who is living in Bangalore teaching Indian tech support engineers how to deal with American customers, and asked him about what he sees. Here's some of his response:
"My sense is that the pace of outsourcing is slowing . . . I've also read articles that have discussed companies bringing business back to the States because they were losing customers. Further, [large international software company] seems to be trying to shift a lot of their services from voice/phones to writing/email. ...
- So I emailed my nephew, who is living in Bangalore teaching Indian tech support engineers how to deal with American customers, and asked him about what he sees. Here's some of his response:
- Nika
- When people lived in tents they had a hard time. And the strong ones usually won. Ok, so weapons even things out, but then came cannons, and poison, and nukes. There's a part where techonolgy has made the world a worse place to live in. Yeah it sucks being out in the woods when you run into a cougar at 2 am and he stares at you menacingly from the hill ready to jump on you (gotta love the Olympic peninsula) and you wish you had a portable cannon, but then, walking through the woods in the moonlite without having to worry about all the nuclear war programs on the earth is worth the cougar. I have a chance with the cougar, I hope.
- Randa
- You can run, but you cannot hide. Googled, you are revealed, from birth, informationally and visually (the satellite is on, folks). Google Earth (formerly Keyhole):
- Rex
- I'm not sure if it's worth comparing Postman's dystopic infolust to Friedman's sanguine globalization, but the contrast is successful in suggesting what The World Is Flat seems to get right and wrong. In contrast to Postman, Friedman definitely grasps the role of technology on human interaction.
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Stephanie
- I would agree with the “flattening” idea that technology allows people to be more connected than ever. Rheingold's commentary on the mobile phone shows people can be “always in touch and always reachable,” evidence for a flattened world. However, I would disagree that the world is flat due to the disparities that still exist.
- Steve
- I'm not sure what to think of Friedman's metaphorical usage of breaking down the wall. It seems pretty obvious to me that by breaking down barriers, in this case of open source information, we relinquish power to express ideas freely, communicate more fluidly, and innovate for the future. Unless we're talking about the implications on social sciences, then all I can say to Friedman is “duh!”
- Tony (Fu-Yuan)
- Yes, it is gloalization, and the causes are the development of media. Just as the article we read last week, from the railroad appeared, the communication of humans are more and more connvenient. The telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, and now the internet, they are all shortening the world because the information could pass so fast.
- Vaun
- One of Thomas Friedman's goals as an author is to shock his readers, as his title “The World is Flat” suggests. In my opinion, what he is really talking about is the economic and technological LEVELING, not FLATTENING, of the world, but the word “Flat” makes for a better title, and ever since the Levelers Movement of the 17th century the word “leveling” probably has too much of a socialist flavor for a misty-eyed capitalist like Friedman.
- One of Thomas Friedman's goals as an author is to shock his readers, as his title “The World is Flat” suggests. In my opinion, what he is really talking about is the economic and technological LEVELING, not FLATTENING, of the world, but the word “Flat” makes for a better title, and ever since the Levelers Movement of the 17th century the word “leveling” probably has too much of a socialist flavor for a misty-eyed capitalist like Friedman.