A Flat World:World-Flatteners

Neha Ahmed

In 2005, Thomas L. Friedman published a book called ‘The World is Flat’.

The concept of a ‘flat world’ that he introduced is that our world today is one where walls between people and countries have been knocked down, making everyone in the world inter-connected.

Things that help to ‘flatten’ these walls around us are called ‘wall-flatteners’

There are ten ‘wall-flatteners’, and these are the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Netscape, workflow Software, open source, outsourcing, offshoring, supply-chaining, insourcing, in-forming, and “The Steroids”. Each is described individually in the following slides.

Introduction

The Wall was blocking both our path and our sight to move forward.

The Fall was the beginning of a chain reaction that led to freedom.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

An internet browser

Broadened the audience of the World Wide Web

Made the web more accessible and used by more companies

Netscape

Machines communicating with each other without human involvement

Examples include file conversation and e-mail filtering

Workflow Software

Something that is open for people from all over the world to add to, contribute to, and edit

Examples include wikis (such as Wikispaces and Wikipedia), blogs, and Question/Answer sites (YahooAnswers etc)

Open Source

When a company pays workers from outside of their company to do part of the work they need or to supply them materials

Using sources from outside of one’s own company, group, or organization

Outsourcing

When a company moves its factory to another country

There is much off-shoring in China due to low labour costs

Offshoring

Best example: WallMart

A customer purchases something and the details of the purchase are immediately sent to manufacturers without any human interference

Supply-chaining

When a company’s employees perform services for another company

Saves on shipping costs

Example: UPS repairing Toshiba computers or Nikon cameras

Insourcing

Easy and open access to a wide range of knowledge

Example: search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Ask

In-forming

Personal digital devices

Can be used anytime, anywhere, by anyone

Examples: mobile phones, iPods, laptops

“The Steroids”

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www.propagandaposters.us/imagesofwar/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/wall_fall.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape http://www.sb.fsu.edu/~xray/Images/DellComputer.jpg http://www.serendipity35.net/uploads/wiki.jpg http://matsol.co.in/images/outsourcing_web.png http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/img/2008/03/offshoring.jpg http://www.axtin.com/solutions/images/supply_chain_diagram.jpg http://res.sys-con.com/author/8153/Figure4_Outsourcing_and_insourcing.jpg http://www.google.com/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelbuckle/2354867741/ http://

www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/10684869/2/istockphoto_10684869-blue-bird-talking-on-mobile-phone.jpg

http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/10/Alienware%20superman.jpg http://www.pahing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/blackberry-bold-9000.jpg

Bibliography