Chapter+12+TWIF

Chapter 12. The Unflat World Summary From Thomas Friedman The World is Flat - Release 3.0 - 2007 By Peter Ianacone

“I know the world is not flat.” Friedman writes in this chapter (536), “Yes, you read me right: the world is not flat. Don’t worry. I know.” Bill Gates also worries “that it could be just half the world that is flat and it stays that way.” (541) This enlightening chapter is all about the current and future obstructions to the flattening world. Due to sick, disempowered, and frustrated people, and a limited amount of natural resources, the flattening of the world is threatened.

Signs stating “No cell phones allowed” are popping up. A student took a picture of a test and emailed it to his friend during class (534). The Chinese government blocked all emails that had any Tiananmen Square uprising references (535). History proves that we will all not bow down to technology even though Friedman is a “technological determinist” (536). These are some examples of how the world is resisting being flattened.

To Sick Technology is eclipsed by poor health, a broken health system, or a lack of education about sicknesses. HIV, preventable diseases, and lack of clean water impact millions of people in India, China, Africa, and Latin America (539-540). People are too poor, too sick or have to care for loved ones to care for flattening technologies. For example, one million people die every year from malaria; malaria is preventable (541). Ill health can trap people in poverty (544). Due to little profit opportunities, few organizations help these people, but the Gates Foundation and Infectious Disease Researchers have provided aid (545). A flattening world could help solve these types of problems because “you can solve a problem on your own, but not a big problem.” (543)
 * It is important to note that Friedman predicts in a flattened world, “a pandemic spreads faster and much wider, killing more people…something like the influenza virus.” (544-545)

Too Disempowered Many people live in between the flat and unflat world. They don’t have tools, skills, or infrastructure so they are disempowered (546-547). “Where people have hope, you have a middle class. Middle class is a state of mind, not income.” (Yang, 537) Some of the world’s poor can now see the rich, but have no means to get there (548). Anti-Globalization and anti-Americanization has lost often lost touch with the world’s poor. We could globalize through local governments to “unlock natural entrepreneurship.” (551). For example, HP helped these disempowered using photos in remote Chinese villages (553-555).

Too Frustrated Authoritarian and religious obscurest forces, particularly in the Arab world, resist modernization (569). Marxist or Leninist or authoritarian governments are often trying to build a tradition-filled or utopian place on earth (560). 1.6% of the Arab world does not have Internet access states the Associated Press, 2004 (562). They often feel humiliated by the rest of the world, (563) so “they attack trust, which keeps open-societies open, innovating, and flattening.” (557).

Too Many Toyotas – [an environmental concern] “Be afraid. I certainly am” Friedman states when thinking about running out of natural resources (570). In a flattened world “we will see the dream of a beautiful life, but if we all have it there will be no resources left” (571). For example Beijing “has 1000 new cars on its roads every day!” (572). Half of the water in the world’s seven largest rivers is useless (571). Because the US has been such a big polluter in the past, the US needs to set a new example, a “New Green Deal” (557-558). Governments need to help this along through standards, regulations, taxes, and incentives (558-559). “Green is the new red, white, and blue” (559).
 * It is important to note that Friedman also predicts in our flattening world, there will be an oil shortage that effects prices, in part due to China’s increased demand (556-557).

__ Analysis __ I agree with most of what Friedman writes in this chapter. He writes “whatever the innovation, people will find a way to use it and abuse.” (534) I think this perfectly captures his point. Technology—specifically in the area of communication—has its advantages and disadvantages—its benefits and its negative outcomes. I appreciated the story about two students using their cell phones to cheat on a test. It’s a great example of why cell phones should not be allowed in the school environment. His ideas in the first part of this chapter can clearly be applied to students and educators because when it comes to technology, some will use it—and use it well—and others will either not use technology at all, or perhaps abuse it. Cheating with cell phones, along with the “cut-n-paste” form of plagiarizing that unfortunately continues to rear its ugly head with every research paper, forces teachers and administrators to have yet another role in school systems: security guards.
 * __ The Unflat World __**

Before isolating reasons why many people will be resistant to or do not have exposure to the internet and other technologies, Friedman claims that “capabilities create intentions.” (536) His discussion on this belief somewhat reminded me of the famous line from //A Field of Dreams//: “If you build it, they will come.” Friedman goes a step further and feels that society creates pressure on those to use technology—that you “must” do it, rather than you “can” do it. I was happy to see that Friedman backed off a bit here as there is still a large population who are resistant to new technologies including the internet.

As Friedman categories the “non-technological” beings of the world, he writes with a more critical pen calling the middle class a “state of mind, not a state of income.” I’m not sure how to take this, although I understand his perspective. Middle class could most likely be divided into another hundred steps on the socio-economic scale, so I even question his focus on this group. As Friedman describes the globe’s pandemics, epidemics and poverty-stricken populations he seems to quarantine people and is one step from stating that they “didn’t join the bandwagon.” “The world will be entirely flat only when all of these people are brought into it.” (540) I feel that this could be applied to communities at a national, local and collegiate level. Those who “resist” or do not have experience with technology have to be pulled in. I later appreciated the direction of his ideas and comments, however, when he writes “you can do a project on your own, but you can’t solve a big problem on your own.” (543) A flat world, however, could potentially foster a wide-spread epidemic and cause a global collapse! In general, though he calls for global support to solve the problems of hunger and sickness and I thought it made complete sense.

In between flat and unflat, lie the half flat population. Those who are not necessarily sick or disconnected from society, but do not have the same opportunities to be “flat.” “Stop the globalization train, we want to get on…” but they need some help. (547) Later in this section, after much discussion of politics and international relations, Friedman states (almost contradictory to previous claims) that “the world doesn’t need the anti-globalization movement to go away…we just need it to grow up.” I agree with his sly attack on activist groups and the WAY they carry out their agendas to attempt to help the poor.

It is understandable that “frustrated” citizens of the world feel isolated from other nations because stronger and more open communication exists between some countries…and not others. The rest of this section seemed to take a bit of a tangent and became more of a commentary on Arab-Muslim relations, al-Queda and international opinions of 9/11.

The last portion of the Unflat World—“too many Toyotas”—discusses the need to “Go Green.” I agree that the Earth is running low on natural resources, but I think it will take much more than “government leaders” (578) to influence people globally and inspire consumers to use less power. ~JM

__ Summary and Analysis: __ This chapter discusses the effects of world flattening from a cultural perspective. This chapter was not included in the first edition and Friedman admits that he decided to comment on “cultural flattening” after getting feedback from many of his readers. I think it is more than fitting that Friedman writes about this perspective because we live in a society driven by media and pop culture. As the author also suggests, we are learning more about other cultures and societies because of the mass communication that has developed. Ten or twenty years ago, we had no exposure to other countries other than through TV.
 * __ Globalization of the Local __**

The author pinpoints one historical event as the beginning of a new phenomenon in which Americanization “took off” so to speak. After the “fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a considerable and justifiable worry around the world that ‘globalization means Americanization.’” (477) During this time, it became increasingly “popular” to buy into American products, entertainers, designers and fast-food chains and those in other cultures had to worry about being, as Friedman writes, “steamrolled…Globalization would have an American face, an American look, and an American taste.” (478)

Although I was still in Elementary school during this historic event, I can remember the “boom” of American Pop Culture lead by the likes of Max Headroom, MTV-Veejays and Cola Wars. It seemed, at that age that the entire world was “The United States.” In fact, this chapter reminded me of two of my favorite songs: We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel and It’s the End of the World as We Know It by REM. Both are social commentaries on national and international politics and cultural frenzies. [] []

Rather than promoting “American Imperialism,” however, the evolution of new technologies and methods of communication began to provide opportunities for other cultures to flourish. I absolutely agree with Friedman’s opinion that although the flat-world platform could “homogenize cultures” it would give “even greater potential to nourish diversity to a degree that the world has never seen before. The flat-world platform enables you to take your own local culture and upload it to the world.” (478)

As sited above, Friedman notes that the central reason for this change is the ability to upload data to the internet. It makes complete sense that those who remain in their native countries, as well as those who are uprooted to America and Europe, can still practice and publicize the components of their culture. I also agree with Indrajit Banerjee, the secretary general of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) whom Friedman gives credit to for coining the phrase “globalization of the local,” that “diaspora communities around the world use today’s global media networks to cling to their local mores, news, traditions and friends—no matter where they are living…It is the local which goes global.” (480)

One other important section quoted COO Ashish Kulkarni from Bangalore: “Because of exposure, we can get people to think they can transform their skills that their fathers had!” A talented artist and designer can now find a career in 3-D animation rather than 2-D cartooning.

If this globalization continues over the next decade, then, perhaps Google will increase its network to much more than 116 different languages. There will most likely be another dramatic increase in podcasting from China and India, and the new markets are “popping up” everywhere. As aforementioned, homogenizing culture is a possible negative affect of globalization. I think we all take pride in our unique traditions, beliefs and practices and would not want the flat world to inspire mass uniformity.

As educators, I think we have a responsibility to expose students to “what’s out there” if not encourage them to look and learn beyond the confines of our small school. If a business or social studies teacher wishes to teach a lesson involving international relations, trading and importing/exporting, they now have the capability to show videos on youtube, research websites from other countries and also, perhaps establish teleconferencing to and from other countries. 15 – 20 years ago, that wasn’t even a thought in a teacher’s mind As we saw in the Japanese video, administrators, teachers and organizational leaders can learn from the successes and failures of other school systems internationally. From a student’s perspective, a class can be engaged by a homemade video or online project from other students in a foreign country. This may consequently dispel negative stereotypes about different races and cultures and illustrate the age old idea that “we’re not so different.” ~JM