Chapter+2+TWIF

Chapter Two: The Ten Forces That Flattened the World Analysis Dorothy Finkel-Laverty This chapter was truly fascinating. To have someone list the 10 most important business and technological changes in the world over the past 20 years was a walk through history from one particular perspective. I could definitely see this chapter being made into a “How Does That Work?” type documentary. Let me simply list the ten changes first, and read through them a couple times to get the overall time line. 11/9/89 was the date that the Berlin Wall came down, and represents an loss of walls between countries, setting the stage up of the world to for global business. It is interesting to note that when you are living through a life-changing event in history, you seldom recognize it for all of its implications. While the fall of the Berlin Wall was a political event, and represented an opening up of peoples who had been separated for decades, Friedman adds the perspectives of politics, global geography, business, and, of course, world-flatening capability.
 * 1) 11/9/89 – The New Age of Creativity: When the Walls Came Down and the Windows Went Up
 * 2) 8/9/09 – The New Age of Connectivity: When the Web Went Around and Netscape Went Public
 * 3) Work Flow Software
 * 4) Uploading – Harnessing the Power of Communities
 * 5) Outsourcing – Y2K
 * 6) Offshoring – Running with Gazelles, Eating with Lions
 * 7) Supply-Chaining – Eating Sushi in Arkansas
 * 8) Incourcing – What the Guys in Funny Brown Shorts Are Really Doing
 * 9) In-forming – Google, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search
 * 10) The Steroids – Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual

8/9/95 represents a technological advancement – while 1995 is generally thought of as the beginning of the Internet to provide low-cost communications capability, and the World Wide Web as the container for the information, without the software to easily deliver it, and to provide the means to deliver the information to millions, the audience would have remained just the handful of academics and military people who invented it. That the browser software was made available, and standardized, allowed multitudes of people to use it, and launched the internet/web that we have today. I would like to differentiate between data and information, as this is key to some of Friedman’s later discussions, and has huge implications to those of us in the field of education. I would have used the word data here: data is the raw material; information is the assimilation of the data and the subsequent ability to do something with that data. Information would be conclusions, analysis, and the development of ideas fertilized by that data. For example, data is “it is 37 degrees outside today.” Information is “I will be cold, I am comfortable at about 70 degrees; I had better put on a coat because it is cold.” Friedman does not do justice to the subsequent business wars in geekdom that went on during that time period. Businesses which saw the potential of the Internet and World Wide Web were slowed down by the confusion in the software markets, and working with the wrong browser software could slow down releases of systems and lead to loss of business opportunities which would provide seed money to grow. The confusion included 30 to 90 day free trials using various browsers, Microsoft trying to corner the market by including it’s own proprietary browser in releases of Windows, price-point decisions made by early browser companies. The ultimate decision to allow Netscape to be had **for free** was truly a market decision that rocked the Web communications world. The creation of W3C - The World-Wide Web Consortium, a group of volunteers who debated, decided, and published (on the Web, of course: see [] ) the standards that allowed the creation of a simple to use standard that launched the spread of the data and information that we know today as the World Wide Web. These two events lead to the concept of **sharing among geeks**, which is key to many of the concepts introduced in Friedman’s later discussions.

Work-flow software is a business concept that has a geek equivalent – object oriented software design. As a computer programmer during those times (I worked for Prudential Insurance for 19 years in various systems departments, then moved into teaching computer programming), I came to develop one of my life tenets: (and you may quote me if you give me credit) that **a lazy person makes a good systems person**. Because time is money, the person who constantly looks for a faster, smarter way to do things is the one who is the most productive. An outgrowth of the Galbrath studies in the early 20th century on time and motion studies, the concept of re-usable code, or developing “generic” pieces of your application, whether is an animated film or a block of code that can work in many different programs, is key to this flattener. Think about it – once the graphic artist develops all of the software that shows Nemo swimming, and makes a few changes to indicate fast swimming as opposed to slow swimming, those blocks of “film” can be inserted over and over again, with a different background each time – the lazy person’s solution to producing more film footage! To bring Daniel Pink’s book into this flattener is a natural step - – once the standards are established, then doing the work becomes less of an innovative challenge, and we will find that more of this can be off shored.

The next flattener – Uploading - is also one of technology – allowing every user to publish their work to the web. Friedman discusses both shared software and shared data/information are covered as one flattener. I would have put them into separate categories, but I have a geek perspective, which he admits he does not. There are many people in the world of systems – engineers, programmers, security experts – who do the work because they love to do the work, and take great pleasure in creating something that hasn’t been done before, or that does it significantly better than earlier ones. While they may work as mild-mannered Network Administrators by day, by night, they do the same thing but for free! For them to share the work for free is a heady feeling, way at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs! The feeling of publishing your own words for the first time can also be very heady – and the web allows people to do just that, whether their words are worth publishing. This leaves educators with the challenge of teaching their students to be critical of their research. Teaching students to apply the journalistic discipline of checking their sources, and getting at least two other different sources to support what they are writing needs to be emphasized in all grades.

Outsourcing started because of the “Y2K” problem; in the beginning, there was storage, and it was good. But it was expensive, and so early systems designers were encouraged to pack as much data into as small a space as possible; so they short-sightedly cut the first two digits off of the year as a standard practice. In the 1980s, it became apparent that once we passed 1999, the computers would think that the year 2000 was 1000, and do all sorts of illogical things. (I once ran a report at Prudential that listed one of our insurance agents emeritus as being “negative 16” years old). The Y2K project was undertaken in all companies with computer systems, and was potentially extremely expensive; the downside was that if you did everything properly, and made all corrections, the result would be that nothing happened – a difficult business decision to cost justify to senior executives who may have had very little understanding of the problem. In addition there were not enough programmers and systems analysts to handle the workload – so outsourcing was born. From there, Asia saw the potential and quickly produced the educated engineers needed to continue to develop the outsourcing business. So while outsourcing was developed by innovative American business people as a solution to a short term problem, it grew into a major economic issue in the US, who was producing educated engineers at an extremely rapid rate.

Offshoring is to the world of production what outsourcing was to the systems arena. Because of advances in technology which allowed faster, cheaper transportation and communication, having your manufacturing done in countries where the cost of land, construction of factories, and personnel to staff those factories were readily and cheaply available, companies started finding ways to instill the American standards in those far-away places, and produce manufactured goods that equaled and surpassed those produced in the US. One result of this was that blue-collar jobs were eliminated in many places, shutting down employment opportunities for many high-school graduates. We are left with a gap in placing young adults in jobs that would give them a start, and now need to find a way to encourage them to continue education in other areas. Educational leaders must re-think our entire education system, as the one we have developed was aimed at producing either college freshmen or blue-collar workers, and there are not enough jobs for the blue-collar workers. This has produced a large group of high school students who see no motivation to graduate high school, leaving them even less well prepared to become productive members of society.

And so a large number of them go to work for WalMart, which brings us to Supply-Chaining. Supply-chaining is a term meaning that the goods can be shipped to the point-of-sale quickly, and can be diverted from one destination to another as needed. It includes such technology enhancements as reporting sales directly to the manufacturer, re-directing a shipment from one place to another. It works with large companies, and has lead to the downfall of many small neighborhood stores who cannot compete with the WalMarts; however, the ingenious entrepreneurs are figuring out a way to develop boutique businesses which cater to specific tastes, or which offer customer services that cannot be provided efficiently in a WalMart. I agree with Friedman about this in particular; why shouldn’t we pay lower prices for quality goods? I also appreciate that he acknowledges the early errors made by such companies as WalMart in the treatment of employees. The strong ethic that has been a part of the American consumer is coming out, and the public needs to continue to demand that large companies treat their employees with respect, offering a living wage and decent benefits.

Insourcing is a natural outgrowth of supply-chaining – UPS being the company that Friedman chose to use to illustrate it. What Friedman does not get into is that UPS has expectations that their employees keep focused on the mission of the business – during the rush seasons, every employee is required to ride the delivery trucks for two weeks. I know someone who is a systems director for UPS in NJ, and she was given a dispensation from this requirement as her job is considered critical to the UPS system being able to continue to run; however, she has figured out a way to both do her regular job, and to ride the trucks during crunch time, reflecting the company culture. Once that culture took hold, employees find creative outlets by finding other businesses that UPS can take on, building on their strengths. The way Friedman presents this, it all seems so natural, that you tend to forget how innovative some of the entrees into other businesses have been. This is truly a company that epitomizes American ingenuity at its best, and educators should find a way to incorporate some of the practices into their lessons. If you did not read all of chapter 2, please find time to read about Flatteners #7 and 8 – they are real eye-openers, and in my opinion, contain many gems that educators need to learn about and teach about.

In-forming with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Web Searches seem to me to be simply an outgrowth of Flattener #2 (When the Web Went Public). Again, my perspective as an early web-developer puts me in a different position than Friedman, but they seem to be the same flattener to me. I won’t bore you with a bunch of technical terms here, but it is more of geeks-having-fun-and-getting-paid-for-it. See what can happen when people find their place in the employment world? See what happens when you find the perfect job that you would do for free if you hadn’t found someone who is willing to pay you for it? Can you say that about your job?

The Steroids – Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual – This last flattener is extremely interesting – again, one which I encourage everyone to read if you haven’t yet done so. This is history in the making! These technologies are so new that we don’t know their impact, like we do with the first few flatteners. These technologies are the ones which educators are finding extremely challenging to work into the curriculum. But think back to 1999 – how many schools had computers and encouraged their students to use the web? Ten years from now, do you think that the digital communications devices will be viewed the same way as computers in schools were viewed in 1999?

10 years from now, I expect that hand-held communications devices will have advanced in ways that we cannot imagine. Why not encourage your students to project technology use 10 years in the future? I think most, if not all of us, agree that technology belongs in education from the very beginning of students’ schooling. Students’ exposure to technology starts before birth; it is not new to them, just as personal computers are not new to many of our students. Having technologies that are new to us now will become as commonplace to today’s students as having a TV in your living room is the norm in this country. Schools need to embrace the changes, and find ways to use them as tools, not areas of contention.