Sunday, April 17, 2011

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment