"Future Intelligence" Response

It is known that one of the dominant fields of knowledge in our age is the knowledge of highly developed technology. The movie was about how developed technology is in our age and how influential it can be on our lives. It showed how technology can replace lots of human powers and how it can replace human themselves in the near future. "In 25 years, robots will have superior cognitive ability to humans." I believe that this illustrates that technology is amazingly advanced and being more developed by MIT level experts. Scientists predict that one day there will be a society of robots similar to humans. In my opinion, this idea has more disadvantages than advantages. It might help to make life much easier for us, yet robots might also be more superior for the powers they have.

My impression about the Gina was that I was stunned by how amazingly developed its technology was. Having a flexible body, this car can create a revolution in the car industry. As an avid fan of German cars, especially BMW, I think that a whole new world can be brought to existence by producing such a car. I have seen the Gina before seeing the movie in class. One of my dreams in life is to see that fabric-skinned shape-shifting sports car which is located in the BMW museum in Munich, Germany.

Developing Countries and the Flat World

We have already seen that Friedman mentioned ten flatteners. In this section of the book, The World is Flat, he believes that the nations that have intentions to develop themselves must think about introspection while thinking about the flat world. It is not about going through all the steps, yet it is about knowing their position regarding the flatteners.  Other than committing to a competitive market, those countries must also develop infrastructure, right governance, and proper education.

Friedman provides Ireland as an example of a business-friendly country. It is one of the richest countries in the European Union because of addressing infrastructure, education, and governance.  It is not correct to say that cheap work is wanted everywhere. In fact, the capital seeks the most productive labor at the cheapest price.

Another thing that Friedman mentions in the text is that it is necessary to understand the culture in order to understand the economic performance of a country. He argues that the open cultures have the best chance to succeed because of their ability and willing to adapt to global practices. He also mentions the importance of giving woman the opportunity to express themselves because keeping them away from the workforce eliminate half of the talent pool. Friedman calls the missing element “the intangible things.” Friedman boils the intangibles down to two basic elements: a willing society and leaders with vision. His example for this case is the success of China, unlike Mexico.

Digital Story Telling Podcast

The advantages are the female speaker claims that the ability to tell a story through a podcast makes an "exponential" difference e that through a podcast you can reach a much wider audience.

One important thing to know is that digital tools improve digital literacy, as users have to know how to use the verbal and visual aids to put their stories together. This obviously helps users improve their communications skills, and allows them to become more comfortable with a whole range of digital tools, which are becoming more important through time. Furthermore, users learn how to use the web for their stories, editing software, as well as greatly improving their task and project management skills. Digital storytelling allows kids to explore and explain their individual stories in their own way, using many different skills to put a great story together.

The most obvious disadvantages associated with digital storytelling seem to be that it takes a lot of time to prepare. Obviously it will take up a lot of time for both parties involved (Student and teacher), but there are ways to counter this as well, by getting the students to better use their time outside of class in getting everything ready.

To be honest, I only understood digital storytelling after listening to the podcast. I guess it is a chance for me to improve my skills regarding basic editing on moviemaking software, and that by the end of this project, I will be more comfortable using the software. 

The Final Four Flatteners and "The Triple Convergence."

Supply Chaining: it is the 7th Flattener that Friedman talked about in his book. His idea about this flattener is increasing the connections between suppliers, retailers, and customers. Wal Mart is a good example to use for this flattener. He compares this flattener, the modern retail supply chain, to a river. Wal Mart is highlighted for its use of technology to streamline its sales, distribution, and shipping management. Supply Chaining is an example of the flattening of the world because it levels the ground and boundaries between customers and manufacturers regardless of where they are in the world.

Insourcing: it is the 8^th flattener and here Friedman uses UPS as an example. He shows how the company's employees perform services for other companies, such as UPS servicing and repairing Toshiba computers and products at their own UPS hub, by UPS employees.

In-forming: it is the 9^th flattener. Friedman describes Google, as well as other search engines, as prime examples. In-forming refers to just how easy it is for people, regardless of place, to get information about different things.

'The Steroids': it is the 10^th and last Flattener that Friedman mentioned. It is a combination of small factors that help to increase the affects of outsourcing, offshoring, uploading, supply-chaining, insourcing, and in-forming. Examples used for this flattener include Mobile phones, iPods, and instant messaging.

In 2000, a new flatter came to stage. It all started from ten flatters that were converging with one another. New businesses led to the creation of new expertise. Individuals started to learn and gain new habits.

1. Convergence one: the creation of ten flattener’s convergence (platform), which allows people around the globe including businessmen, students, and workers to collaborate with each other to get their work done.           

2. Convergence two: it is the “Horizontilization”, which is the convergence of allowing different fields, instead of people, to collaborate with each other. It makes it possible for the IT people, technology users, students, and many other fields to be able to work together for certain goals. It is different than the first convergence because it is a horizontal collaboration, which requires a different set of skills.

3. Convergence three: it is a demographic convergence. In our age, India, China, Russia, the Eastern European states, and Latin America were the doors for people to participate in the global concern by opening their economic and political systems. This collaboration leads to some developments that have never seen before. The world witnessed 1.5 billion new participants.

Presentation critique

As a group, I believe that our presentation was good enough to be one of the best ones in the class. However, there were still some things that we have to work on for the next time. Personally, I was a little bit nervous because I was not prepared. I hesitated to give out information because of the time limit.

Ranj exceeded the time a little bit. It took him more than four minutes to do his part. Rahi could have shown some graphs to show the economic information related to YouTube.

We did not provide any information on how to create a YouTube account. We also did not mention the age restrictions. Most importantly, we did not mention the web address of YouTube, which is www.youtube.com

To make our presentation better, I believe that we need some more rehearsal, body language and organization.

The next three flatteners

Thomas Friedman mentioned three other flatteners in this section of his book. The flatteners are:

Uploading: Friedman states that it is the process in which individuals or communities have the ability to put information on the web. The easy access to the internet gives us the opportunity to create different great things. The example that he uses to show how great this process can be is Wikipedia. According to Friedman, this flattener has the potential to be the most "disruptive" of all.

Outsourcing: this was a useful tool that allowed companies to split their services and departments into different components, allowing for cost-efficient work to be dealt with in cheaper prices. Friedman’s example on this part is India. He explains how US companies outsource jobs to Indians trained at the Technology Institutes. He shows that this process does not get in the way of American companies, but is a great way of saving money, as well as creating jobs in developing markets.

Offshoring: it is the process of moving a company’s factory abroad. The reasons behind that might be different reasons such as cheaper labor, better tax rates or better trade barriers. This is what the manufacturers think about outsourcing and their perspective about it. 

The Flatteners

In this chapter, Friedman talks about ten forces that have effects on the process of flattening the world and becomes equivalent which is happening right now. The first three flatteners:

1- Collapse of the Berlin Wall (11/9/89): the wall collapsed which led to the collapse of communism and raise of freedom. At the same time, the technology of computers, communications, and Windows developed and that helped connecting the world.

2- Netscape (8/9/95): went Netscape went public, everyone is can access to it no matter how old you. In addition, people can share music, films, pictures, and documents.

3- Workflow software: software that is made to connect computers together, and by doing that, people will be able to collaborate and share work together.

In my opinion, I agree with Friedman on the idea of the flatteners. Also, the first three flatteners are working together to establish the foundation for the global collaboration between individuals and corporations. For example, when the Internet became a trend in Kurdistan at the beginning of the millennia, people could get help from other people. Also, those three forces are sequential. Therefore, if any of them were happened, the next one weren’t happened too.          

The World Is flat, Chapter 1 Summary "While I was Sleeping"

Friedman makes a long journey with a crew from the Discovery Times channel around the world, which makes him believe that the world is flat. When he goes to Bangalore, India, he sees advertisements of traditionally American companies such as Pizza Hut, Epson, and HP. He notices that everyone he sees is trying to be American. What he saw in Infosys Technologies Ltd, which was a conferencing system they created that allows people from around the globe to meet and work together in one giant room via satellite and teleconferencing technology. He also gets so impressed by the campus’s advanced technology such as the glass-and-steel buildings and large flat-screen televisions. The thing that fills Friedman with excitement is that he realizes that the world is flat.

He draws us a timeline showing the different eras of globalization historically from the days of Columbus to our present day. He also says that we are now in the middle of the line when the world shrinks from small to tiny. He, later, gets impressed by the effect of remote communication on business when he meets an Indian businessman called Jerry.

We can see examples and the impact of the business outsourcing phenomenon on its players after he travels to Japan, China and back to America. He goes to the city of Dalian in China where he sees buildings of GE, Sony, Microsoft, Dell, etc., which shows that China is developing high-tech cities. In Iraq, Friedman sees how the military has been flattened through the use of computer technology. Still some other things he saw back home shocked him. When Freidman explains outsourcing in his society, Homesourcing and military outsourcing are also illustrated.

Open Source Software

The term ‘open source’ software refers to software that provides the source code. The source code and the information that is kind of related to the software, which are protected by the copyright holders, are made available to all users, who can then edit the software, also in some cases to actually redistribute the software.

Mostly, open source software are developed or modified publicly sometimes as a team or individuals. When mentioning ‘open source’ software, the first thing that comes to mind is Linus Torvalds, who was the founder of Linux, a UNIX based operating. People believe that if Torvalds had not made it available for free, it would not become as it is not in the market. Examples of open source software are Linux, which is an operating system, Perl, PHP, and Python, which are computer programming languages, Apache, which is server software, and OpenOffice, which is a desktop application.

It is hard to say if open source is better than proprietary software because they are both beneficial. Proprietary software developers’ motivation is profit, so they have to work as hard as possible to make sure their product sells, otherwise they could lose their jobs. For example, Microsoft’s software has to reach a certain quality before it is put on the market. Open source developers do not have this motivation, so the programs that they build will not be to the best of their abilities.

Ray Kurzweil's presentation

Technology is dominating the world and spreading so quickly. Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and a visionary man who studied computers and technology in Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT). He expresses his ideas and thoughts about technology and its development in the future. He states that the development level of technology is predictable at different points in time. With a team of ten, they built models that are able to do measurements that show the expected progress of different technology through time. He says “the rate of adopting new ideas is doubling, according to our models”. His example of predicting how advanced technology can develop in the future is the robotic red blood cell that, theoretically, should be available by 2020. By having 10% of those cells, you will be able to hold your breath in the bottom of a pool for four hours or sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, which is amazing.

He also talks about the biological evolution of humans and links those ideas to technology. He believes that technology will play a big role in the biological life of humans in the future by inhibiting genes and designing babies.

Kurzwei also predicts that computers are going to be embedded in different things in our life, which is what we are witnessing now.

He concludes his presentation by saying that the development of technology will get to a point where we will be able to use computers in anything in our life.