Is Is a Flat World? Essay

Freidman summarizes the three globalizations that have occurred in the world. The first one in 1492-1800, making the world to a medium size. Second one in 1800 to 2000 making the world to a size small and third one starting in 2000 making the world flat after all these years of developing technology causing to become an integrate and flat world. Freidman’s 10 events and forces starting in Nov. 9, 1989 with Berlin Wall’s falling down mention how the world get flattened so fast. He mentions in these 10 events the Netscape moment offering the dot-com and connecting people in a way never before. This enable Indian engineers which years back when the world wasn’t globalized didn’t had the opportunity to compete in a position with an American to be enlisted for outsourcing. With these events the world suddenly began outsourcing, offshoring, open-sourcing, insourcing, supply-chaining and informing people and connecting them, showing the world a whole new idea: that we are living in a globalize world. The final event he called it â€Å"the steroids† which is the wireless access that enables you to connect with every person you want from anywhere with any device. Which is contrary to what Ghemawat says, â€Å"People are getting more connected but they aren’t connecting† (pg. 58 Ghemawat, 2005). The fact is that people are spending time chatting with family and friends that meeting someone to start a flat world. It is true that not everyone has the access to technology, but is a fact that each day more people get connected and collaborating to this than ever before in history’s life, this is the first step for a globalize world. Americans had become lazier in innovating probably because they never thought that globalization would be knocking in their front doors. â€Å"This is not a test† Freidman says, is already happening and the soonest you prepare for this the soonest you will be part of this flattened world. â€Å"Why the World Isn’t Flat† by Pankaj Ghemawat is just the opposite as everything Freidman tells, making an exaggeration to all this presumption of the world being flat. In the article he states facts proving we are far away from a fully globalized world. He evidences this by stating, â€Å"90% of all phone calls, web traffic and investment is global. † Freidman’s 10 forces seem persuasive but Ghemawat’s The 10 Percent Presumption proved him wrong. In these presumptions it shows that immigration, phone calls, direct investment, and others don’t even exceed the 10% in levels of internationalization across industries. Patents and portfolio investment barely exceeds the 10% and trade hardly beats the 20%. Even with trades being the highest you cannot have a globalize world with that percentage shown. For Ghemawat all of this flat world that Freidman says contains an exaggeration maybe in order to sell books and that we in fact are more cautious and prefer to be in a protectionism world. Although major revolutions as the Internet has improved the way we globally integrate, the barrier where globalization’s principles: language, geography and distance doesn’t matter is still not functioning at all. Russia’s local service Yandex beating up Google because they don’t have the ability to understand the complexities of the Russian language proves that we are not living in a globalize world. He also states that there is a fear of becoming a globalize world as tendency is supporting more protectionism and â€Å"that globalization may be incompatible† While Freidman’s posture is mentioning that a flat world involves everyone around, as a video-conference with the entire supply chain of the company and different employees all at once. You need to leave protectionism and a fear of being globalized and knowing you’re in a flat world when your office has eight different clocks. Ghemawat mentions that people like Friedman are describing globalization, as a world that doesn’t exists. The truth is for Freidman that people don’t know but we are actually living a globalization that is shown by stating a fact that China graduates twice students with bachelor’s degree than US. â€Å"America is falling behind† he says, but the truth is that everyone is falling behind if they don’t realize that the world is becoming more flat and less round. â€Å"The World is Spiky† by Richard Florida mentions that the world is more harrowing and less flat as Freidman says. He refers spiky with a map as the different peaks around the world and how they aren’t constant but significantly diverse that you cannot call it a flat world as Freidman. There had been a growth in countries with the major cities but they are leaving their other cities behind this process of globalization. Florida says this spiky globalization in big countries like China are concentrated their production, innovation in their rural regions leaving the urban outside of this making them have conflicts. Instead of a flatter world is becoming a spiky world with peaks dispersed all around it but in an inconsistent way. Instead of raising spikes, there needs to be valleys to have equality in their peaks for a flat world to come and he’s arguing why Freidman left this gap between the poor and rich behind. Also the article by Matt Taibbi â€Å"Flathead† for the New York Press, says he is not surprised about what Freidman says because he always continues to fail his metaphors in this case the world being flat. Arguing in favor of the exaggerations Ghemawat said about Freidman and the harrowing the world is as Florida. I believe that Freidman exaggerated of the world being flat but also I believe this is just what we need in order to have a motivation and not getting stuck in the laziness and comfort. Maybe this fear of globalization people have, is because they know that they’re living in a globalize world where they can be left behind if they don’t realize the fact that today the world is becoming more flat and less round or spiky.