The main topic of the first part of “The World is Flat” is the reasons that the world has in so many ways become small. The author goes into great detail on 10 different contributing factors to the flattening of the world. All of which have one central theme; the world has changed so now people can communicate with anyone any where at any time. People have never before been able to communicate in the ways that they are able to communicate now. People can now talk with someone on the phone and show them a picture; all while they’re transferring vital information over the net. This may seem trivial, but implications on the world have been immense.
Business has taken all the new communication tools and made the world its producer, not just one single country. For example, they outsource the service industry to India; where people speak English, are highly educated, and work for a fraction of the amount that an American worker works for. Business has outsourced many of the jobs that used be done in the U.S. to other countries because the communication system allows them to do so, and foreigners can do the same job better for less money.
Even with this frightening reality the new communication abilities aren’t completely disheartening. In what the author penned as “flat world”, individuals are open to a whole new reality where they can acquire knowledge in much easier ways than before. New avenues such as Google and Wikipeda allow people to do research on various topics in minutes. In the past if you wanted to know more about a person or a place you’d go to the library, look in a verity of books, and maybe then you’d get the information that you were looking for. Now, with these new tools, people are able to just type a few key words and, bam, they have instant access to whatever their heart desires. In a flash people are able to make new discoveries! What’s even better, these new discoveries can take place anywhere in the world! Anyone that can connect to the internet can find information on whatever topic that they want.
Not only is information available to anyone, anyone can become the creator of information. So now I can learn about Ghana from someone that’s lived in Ghana for their entire life, and is part of the culture. They can send me pictures of their town and their family. They can tell me what the people the Ghanaian people think of various topics that affect both of us. In short, anyone can get a much better picture of what life is like in different parts of the world with computers then they could with only books. Now we’re able to interact with the information, not just read it!
As an educator I could just imagine what a classroom might look like with this relatively new ability to communicate. I can see my classroom sharing ideas with a Vietnamese classroom. A sort of “cyber pal” system will replace the often dysfunction “pen pal” system. Students would no longer have to wait for months for their cyber pal to reply to their questions. The conversations would be seamless. Students from all over the world could really one day become pals! Our children have the opportunity to have a truly global perspective on the world and its people. They have the ability to learn from others around the world like we’ve never been able to learn before. If we embrace this new technology then maybe the concept of world peace isn’t that out of the question.
