The book I’m reading is The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. The author is a journalist who was on a job in India with Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys, when he came to the conclusion that the world is flat. By “flat” he means that with globalization the whole world is becoming a more level playing field. More and more countries have access to information and technology. He starts looking more in depth at the outsourcing of tasks and jobs to Indian companies. He talks with workers and managers at call center headquarters throughout India and they show him how it’s more efficient to have the call centers in India because of the cheaper labor price and because of the time zone difference. Outsourcing extends further than just with calling centers too. Simple tax returns are done by employees sitting in cubicles in India and then sent back to accountants in the US. Also, one can hire a personal assistant that, because of the time difference, can be given a task and then complete that task while the American is sleeping, having it ready for that person in the morning. One think that has recently picked up is sending x-rays and other medical images overseas to be reviewed by Indian doctors and then sent back with results to the US. This is convenient because they are up while we are asleep and we are awake while they are asleep allowing a 24/7 availability of someone who can read these medical images. News is being made more efficient by limiting the number of employees in the field and finding the news out fastest, remotely. In the call centers in India, they offer training for accent reduction so that the American feels more comfortable with whom they are speaking too. The thing that I found most interesting is that with all this work they have, there is still time made for them to take classes to further their education and that they make that a goal of their companies to do. I found it alarming that there were so many graduates there because one would think that in time this surge of employment will balance out and India will have some economic and unemployment problems.
After visiting India and coming to the assumption that the world is flat he decided to write this book. He then began a journey throughout the world stopping at places like Tokyo, Dailan, Baghdad, Colorado, and Bethesda. In Tokyo he discovered that Japan was beginning to outsource lower paying jobs to call centers in China. In Dailan there is a wide spread economic increase throughout the whole city. The city has grown rapidly in the high tech industry. In Colorado he was on vacation and called up the company JetBlue to see if they traveled a route from Washington to New York. He spoke with a lady whom which was working from home. The founder of JetBlue called this homesourcing. He stated that it is a great way to keep their costs down and still allow for women to stay at home with their children but provide for their families financially as well. In Baghdad he spoke with an army unit that had an predator drone flying over a Iraqi village. This aircraft was being flown by someone in the states and being analyzed by experts all around the world. This all shows ways in which the world is flat and although it doesn’t directly tie into what we have discussed in class so far I believe that for this flattening to occur there has to be a large amount of cooperation and information transferred from country to country.
I think that the main thing Friedman is trying to show in this first portion of the book is that the world isn’t just leveling in certain places. The world is leveling all over in places that we haven’t seen it level. The spread is much wider and more rapid than any advance that I’ve seen happen in history. I see this as the beginning of a world completely different from the one at which we are comfortable with now. The economic crashes seen here and in Europe are indeed in line with this flattening because as other countries are developing technologically there is a demand for jobs and because of the cheaper costs of outsourcing American and European corporations are more or less abandoning their economies. The world is essentially shrinking its mountain peaks and valleys of technological and economical differences between countries. I cut this section of pages for the report short of its “equal length” from the rest of the book because next Friedman goes into the ten forces that flattened the world and I wanted them all in one post.
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