The World is Flat

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The World is Flat

• A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
• By Thomas L Friedman
• Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times
  for his work at the New York Times, where he
  serves as the foreign affairs columnist. He is
  the author of three best selling books. He lives
  in Bethesda, Maryland.
• 2005

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Thomas Friedman

• While visiting in Bangalore, India someone
  commented that the playing field is being
  flattened . . . My God, hes telling me that
  world is flat!. . . The global competitive
  playing field was being leveled. The world was
  being flattened.

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The Ten Forces That flattened The World
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• 11/9/89 The Fall of the Berlin Wall
• Tilted the worldwide balance of power toward
  democracies and free markets.
• 8/9/95 -When Netscape Went PublicThe offering
  sparked massive investment in fiber-optic cables.
• Work Flow Software The rise of apps from PayPal
  to VPNs enabled faster, closer coordination
  among far-flung employees
• Open- sourcing Self-Organizing Collaborative
  Communities, a la Linux. Launched a collaborative
  revolution.
• Outsourcing Y2K Migrating business functions to
  India saved money and a third world economy.

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• Off shoring contract manufacturing elevated China
  to economic prominence.
• Supply-Chaining Robust networks of suppliers,
  retailers, and customers increased business
  efficiency. Wal-Mart
• Insourcing Logistics giants took control of
  customer supply chains, helping mom and pop shops
  go global
• In-Forming Power searching allowed everyone to
  use the internet as a Personal supply chain of
  knowledge.
• Wireless - Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual

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Do you remember when you first realized the world
is flat?

• Friedman asked a classroom teacher and the
  teacher said he saw a student using a cell phone
  with a camera taking a picture of an exam and
  emailing it to another student. He said it was at
  that moment he realized the world was flat.
• For me it was the first time I spoke to Dell Tech
  Support in Bangladore, India.

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A Flat World Implications for Education
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The Quiet Crisis

• 40 of the 18,146 NASA employees are age 50 or
  older
• NASA employees over 60 out number those under 30
  by a ratio of 31
• The National Commission on Mathematics and
  Science Teaching for the Twenty-first Century
  found that 2/3s of the nations mathematics and
  Science teaching force will retire by 2010

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• When they send jobs abroad, they not only save
  75 on wages, they get a 100 increase in
  productivity.
• Young Chinese, Indians, and Poles are not racing
  us to the bottom. They are racing us to the
  top.
• In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In
  America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears
  and that is our problem.

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The Annual worldwide Intel International Science
and Engineering Fair

• Forty countries participated
• In 2004 65,000 American kids participated
• In China 6,000,000 Chinese kids participated

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Federal Funding

• . . .for research in physical and mathematical
  sciences and engineering as a share of the GDP
  declined by 37 between 1970 and 2004.
• . . .National Science Foundation funding for
  2005 cut

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• My parents used to say clean your plates because
  there are children in China who are starving.
• Now we should say do your homework because
  children in China are starving for your jobs

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