Why The World Isn T Flat Summary

When it comes to globalization, everyone may have a different vision of it’s outcome. For Marcelo Gleiser, the author of “Globalization: Two visions of the Future of Humanity”, a completely globalized world may result in a dystopia. In contrast, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, the author of “A Mickey Mouse Approach to Globalization” and Tanveer Ali, the creator of “The Subway Falafel Sandwich and the Americanization of Ethnic Food” may think of globalization as other cultures sharing each other’s components to interact on a new level and spurring a more “open-minded” (Ali 27) individual.

Globalization has, for better or worse, altered the economic arena for every country in the world. For many less developed countries, globalization has leveled the playing field so that their economies can compete with the larger, more developed ones such as the United States and other large western economies. For instance, technical engineers in India and China are now just as qualified as engineers in America, but at half the cost. The once large and prosperous service sector in the United States as well as telemarketing services have largely been sourced to India as a large exodus of American multinational corporations find cheaper workers who deliver comparable quality. This then seems to be the essence of globalization - businesses

According to Osterhammel and Petersson, globalization “summarizes a wide spectrum of experiences shared by many people” (2). I agree with this statement and would go on to claim that globalization is a group of processes and events, some beneficial and some harmful, that have resulted in the spread of networks across the world. However, this spread of networks did not happen over night. This is in part because not all interactions are transformed into networks, as these require a certain degree of longevity. In order for interactions to become networks, groups must consider the range between each other and their interactions must be important or impactful, intense, fast, durable, and frequent. For the reason that each of these characteristics must be present in order for networks to form, globalization has been in the works for many centuries and is still at work today. Therefore, while the historical events and processes of past centuries have provided the roots of globalization, the modernization of recent decades has built upon these roots to connect the world in a way

The world is not a large and strange place anymore. The world is a place that is interconnected and intertwined. The world has become from a place that each country and their peoples are separate and isolated to a place that each country and their peoples are part of a global network. Thanks to globalization this is occurring. Globalization is the ‘international integration” or ‘de-bordering’ – “a number of highly disparate observations whose regular common denominator is the determination of a profound transformation of the traditional nation-state” (Von Bogdandy 2). Globalization is connecting different people from different cultures and backgrounds together. More and more corporations are entering new foreign markets to sell their

In this chapter, Thomas Friedman looks at how cultures and societies will have to deal with and adapt to the changes that globalization brings to the way of doing business. It affects whole companies and individuals. He gives the perception of the world is flattening by comparing the Industrial Revolution to the IT Revolution that is happening right now. The flattening process was identified by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels in the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. Marx’s writings about capitalism state “the inexorable march of technology and capital to remove all barriers, boundaries, frictions, and restraints to global commerce (Friedman 234).”

Globalization is difficult to simply define due to the variety of changing definitions that have been established over previous decades. Hamilton and Webster (2012) suggest that globalization is the connection between nations, defining globalization as a process in which barriers are reduced in order to encourage exchanges between countries. This view proposes that globalization refers very much so to the trade barriers and the improved communications between countries in order to ensure the world is unified. Globalization increases economic activity across the world and opens up markets for foreign investment.

During the last decade of the twentieth century, the word ‘globalization’ has become an increasingly prominent feature of political, social, and economic discussion in academic and policymaking circles, as well as in the media. The processes and outcomes of globalization drew attention and debates that had one thing in common. The research shows that nearly everyone agrees that globalization is a trend that is changing the face of the world, and as a result the world society lives in a more ‘globalized’ world. Nearly two and a half decades passed since 1990s, and studies have been conducted to examine the causes and consequences of globalization. Moreover, nearly every person experiences some type of globalization and can testify firsthand the effects it has on their life, society, and the state. The analysis of the effects that globalization dynamics have on the world society indicates that globalization has a significant positive impact via spreading opportunities and wealth across nations, stimulating innovation and productivity, enhancing the economic development of poorer countries, and helping to improve living standards.

In Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat he presents his idea of the globalization of the world in all areas; from economic to communication with other countries. Friedman is a journalist from the New York Times and most of his work focuses on economic and technological innovations and advancements, and furthermore how they are associated to history. The ideas he presents in this book are both plausible and convincing. The main focus is whether the world is “flat“. The answer to this question depends on the readers’ political, economical, and technological opinions. Friedman does however present evidence in many situations where the globalization of the world is clearly evident. This essay will explore these different

The famous cheerleader for globalization and author, Thomas Friedman, in his book The World is Flat argues that globalization is proceeding briskly because of the “flattening of the world”. What he means is that with the advent of information technology and seamless communications, any country in the world that has a pool of educated workers can aspire to jump on to the globalization bandwagon and benefit from the erasing of entry barriers. The point here is that countries like India have successfully leveraged the power of IT and communications to leapfrog the intermediate stage of manufacturing power that is required for economies to become fully fledged powerhouses.

Friedman (2005) opens his book with the forces that flattened the world: “The global competitive playing field was being leveled. The World was being flattened.” He describes how each force has affected the developed and developing countries. The concepts Friedman provides concerning the flattening and shrinking of the world seem to be accurately reflected in many aspects of our lives. The effects of globalization, whether positive or negative, are a daily career and personal reality most of us have to face. The world feels much smaller now. The book provides significant information about events that just happened and are happening around us every day all over the world, the rapidly changing business environment, which we are all experiencing from the front row. Our lives are profoundly different than they were at the start of the millennium with such technology advantages. We are all trying to quickly absorb the changes and keep up with their resulting impact on our lives. The facts are that we are all personally witnessing profound global changes unlike anything that our forefathers could have imagined. When we wake up each morning, the world is different than it was the night before. Whether or not we are ready to accept these changes, the reality is that the world is changing and evolving right before our eyes, and these changes are likely to change all of our lives, some for the better, and some for the worse.

The world is flat again, but it has nothing to do with the whether or not the Earth is spherically shaped. This analysis has to do with the globalized 21st century world we live in and how we navigate the business world which now includes access to information, culture, politics and economy from all the nations of the world. It’s a notion that is both exciting and scary if you think about it, as author Thomas L. Friedman writes in his book The World Is Flat. Friedman is an expert on the nuances of globalization and is noted for his writings for The New York Times, winning the Pulitzer Prize three times as their foreign affairs columnist. In 2005 The World Is Flat was given the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In his book he writes about how we got to this point of globalization, and further explains the importance of a number of important factors that facilitate business globalization. He calls these factors “Flatteners,” which include work flow software, outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining and the effects of globalization for developing countries and those already showing up in great force on the global economic playing field.

Globalization is the increasing interdependence and connectedness of the world, its businesses and it markets, as well as flow of goods, ideas, technology, people etc. This phenomenon has increased vastly over the years due to technological advances, telecommunications and internet. As the world becomes a global economy, countries have the opportunity to advance more but with the catch that there is also increased competition. Thus as it becomes more common and powerful a feature, it also has some resistance as well. (InvestorWords, n.d.)

In view of Thomas Friedman’s work “It’s a flat world, after all”, the entire planet is turning into a global village due to a rapid growth of information technology. There are 10 major contributors, which were also named “flateners” by Friedman, that made the playing field level. Undoubtedly, current sophistication in technology has provided us great access to internet, a virtual platform where people are capable of communicating, sharing knowledge, or performing online activities. Globalization appears to have collapsed the concerns of space and time by outsourcing cheap labor from another continent to undertake the same task but with equal or better performance. To some extent, Friedman has brought about an

The world as it is today would have been incomprehensible two or three decades ago. Over the last few years a number of technological advances have made innumerable things suddenly possible and what is surprising is that the readiness with which these things have been accepted implies that they have been desperately needed! For example, in today’s world, we can sit on our beds at home and purchase items from two different corners of the world and expect the goods to reach us in a relatively short period of time; we could also at the same moment using the same means invest our funds in news ventures. This would have been hard to even dream about three decades ago. But, today, a small glitch in this system would be considered unacceptable. Globalisation has empowered the exchange of ideas and knowledge across the globe, aided the movement of people around the world in a manner which on thinking about even today is quite mindboggling. Thomas Friedman in his book – “The World is Flat” has tried to analyse the triggers behind globalisation and has succeeded in doing this to a very large extent. He has explained how ten events between 1989 and 2004 have contributed so largely to the world as it is today. Friedman labelled these events as “Flatteners”. According to him, these events made the world a flat place in the sense that people of different countries

In today’s world, with a few notable exceptions, nearly everyone in every region of the world has access to the same products, information and services. A long-distance relationship is no longer so distant, since each party involved in the relationship can communicate through Skype, Facebook or through any of the vast amount of social media available. A person in Easter Island, one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, can go to the other side of the world and travel to Canada. An economic crisis in Argentina could affect the economic landscape in Brazil. A person in Chile or Peru can buy an Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt because this transnational corporation decided to expand its market to developing countries, or as you might prefer, to emerging economies in South America. Although many of these examples might be trivial, these are the consequences of globalization.