The World Is Flat Essay

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

In Friedman’s “It’s a Flat World, After All”, Friedman in a trip Bangalore, India accidentally “encountered the flattening of the world”. The following paper will analyze “It’s a Flat World, After All” and the flattening of the world. To conclude the paper I will summarize my thoughts on the flattening of the world.

In his essay “Panopticism,” Michel Foucault introduces the Panopticon structure as proof of modern society tending toward efficient disciplinary mechanisms. Starting with his example of the strict, intensely organized measures that are taken in a typical 17th-century plague-stricken town, Foucault describes how the town employed constant surveillance techniques, centralized a hierarchy of authorities to survey households, partitioned individual structures to impose certain behavior, and record current information about each individual.

These forces are the direct result of advanced technology. Moreover, the forces were made possible thanks to the World Wide Web (which is another force Friedman mentions). Technology and Internet are the real reasons our world became flat, and the reason the above flattener forces evolved. Companies, groups, and individuals – all connected together to form one global village. US companies started to outsource the back rooms of accounting firms and forwarding Dell customers to the 24/7 call center located in India. US companies were able to reduce cost, while making India a “customer service nation” and China a “low labor cost nation”.

Over the past decades, Globalization had made the world a much smaller place. In the passage While I was Sleeping by Thomas L Freidman and The Rise of the Rest by Fareed Zakaria, there is a connection between the two passage. Thomas L. Freidman use the metaphor "the world is flat" which mean there are many competition in the world now. Fareed Zakaria address the U.S power is diminishing because the rest of the world is catching up. Along with the diminishing power, America is also outsourcing jobs to other nations where labor are cheap, and abundant of natural resource are available for use, but it is taking jobs away from many American.

Speaker Thomas Friedman is speaking at MIT, which is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “He is an American journalist specializing in foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues. “ (Daniel H. Pink) He is talking about the basis on what the book is about and how he understood this new phenomenon. The book is titled “The World Is Flat”. This title is referring to “the global economic playing field being leveled.” This is a tremendous achievement that all started with Christopher Columbus discovering North America in 1492. This was the first development of the globalization of the world, which today has taken over economies all over the world. This advancement of technology has led to “accidently making Beijing, Bangalore and Bethesda next-door neighbors”. Mr. Friedman then references in chapter one of his book about all of the encounters he had in India that led him to the conclusion, “The World Is Flat”.

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).”

Since the era of globalization, people all over the world became closer than ever before. Goods and services that appear in a country are immediately promoted by the others, as well as international transfer and communication. Thomas L. Friedman, the author of “globalization: the super-story” that was published in 2002 as a book prologue, examines the factors of globalization from diverse aspects and how it could help people better understand the 9/11 events. Friedman not only claims that the globalization brings the world closer together, but also that people are no longer bound by where they come from.

In Thomas L. Friedman’s “Globalization: The Super-Story”, he examines the features of globalization from various aspects and how it helps people better understand 9/11 events. He claims that globalization is the new improved system formed in place of the old “cold war system”(102), and through the patterns of which, people observe today’s world in an integrated way. Simple short phrases, organized structure, colloquial language, and punctuation are techniques Friedman uses to create a reader-friendly, convincing essay. To begin with, Friedman uses simple short phrases to emphasize his points. He starts with an enthusiastic term “big believer” (102), which establishes the colloquial

The author of the essay “Panopticism”, Michel Foucault gives his opinion on power and discipline in Panopticism. He describes Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon”, a tower in the centre of a room which has vision to every cell, generalized for prisoners. In simple words, it functioned in maintaining discipline throughout the jail. It’s most distinctive feature was that; prisoners could be seen without ever seeing. Prisoners would never really know when they are watched and when not. They are always under the impression that someone is keeping an eye on them continuously and if anything goes wrong, or they make mistake, they would be punished severely. Since, a prisoner would never know when he/she is watched, they have to be at their best. In a

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

Author Thomas L. Friedman analyses the technological advances that are creating a level economic playing field with previously disadvantaged countries rising in knowledge and wealth rivaling that of the United States and other world powers in the world. Telephone and computer technology, previously a stronghold only of developed countries, is now easily accessible and has been accessed and mastered by countries such as China and India, making these nations competitive. Friedman perceives the flattening effect as so insightful as to be compared in scope to the Industrial Revolution.

The phrase: "the world is flat" can be interpreted in many ways. Basically what Friedman means by "flat" is "linked." The falling of trade and political barriers and technical advances have made it possible to do business, instantaneously with billions of other people around the world. It has allowed for parts of the world, which had previously been cut off, like China and India, to successfully compete in the world market. Thus, the playing field is being leveled, and no one nation has an advantage. Friedman could also refer to a "flat world" in a metaphorical sense. In a spherical earth you cannot see around the world and cannot recognize the opportunities far from where you live. If the world were flat you could see it all. There

“Globalization is today's reality. Like it or not, the move to a world economy is a fact of life. At some point in the 1990s the process achieved critical mass and people started to sit up and take notice. Many were apprehensive.