The World is Spiky - Essay Example

? of school] of Discipline] Information Systems Assignment Critical Argument on ‘It’s a Flat World, After All’ of of Instructor] [Name of Student] [Date] Technological Advancements have revolutionized the human society. This revolution has been narrated by many people with respect to particular scenarios. The way the human society has been shaped today with the integration of information and communications technology in it has made it poles apart from the world in which our forefathers lived. It was not very long ago that the concept of the planet Earth being round was narrated for the first time by Christopher Columbus as quoted by a number of writers in their works. Though, geographically speaking, the world may actually be round and may consist of places thousands of miles apart but these distances have been bridged by the current prevalent technological advancements. This was exactly the basis of the thoughts expressed by renowned American columnist and writer Thomas Friedman who wrote a famous piece of work titles “It’s a flat world, After All”. Many a school of thoughts liked and appreciated the theories presented by Friedman and adhered to them but many other thought it wasn’t as practical as it posed itself to be. The present discussion is aimed at discussing the thoughts presented by Friedman and commenting upon them in line with some of the concepts we have gone through in our course of information systems. Generally speaking, since information systems have been the core theme of course being studied, the concept that has concretely been established is that information systems have assisted man since their inception in an irreplaceable manner. By taking raw data as input with respect to the organization’s requirements, information systems process it and produce the output required by the stakeholders of that organizational level. The perspective discussed by Friedman is narrated henceforth. Friedman emphasizes that the world of today is nothing but flat. How he comes to that conclusion is by his trip to India where he was amazed to find that local men knew so much the world out there that was not expected from a South Asian developing nation. He strongly advocates Globalization. He mentions that globalization has intermingled the world to such an enormous level that anything happening in one part of the world instantly gets transmitted across thousands of miles without anytime lapse. He accredits the advent of Netscape Navigator (First Internet Surfing Browser) as being a trigger in this age of globalization in which man lives today. Friedman got particularly enthralled when he saw that outsourcing was no more a problem due to the technological advancements. Designers and entrepreneurs from the western countries could easily interact with programmers in the south Asian countries at runtime via video conferencing and internet. This solved the relentless problem of outsourcing and that too at considerable rates without any compromises in quality. Along with outsourcing, Friedman mentioned Insourcing and Supply Chaining as two more of other factors that contributed to globalization. He was fascinated by the fact that as soon as an item would be sold in one of the U.S.A’s supermarkets like Wal-Mart their production setup thousands of miles away would instantly be told to produce another one of those units in order to replace that one that has just been sold. He termed this as supply chaining at its best. Friedman believed that it was long before the programmers in India and China would become the designers as well and there would be no preference to living in Boston to that over living in Bangalore, India. He makes a number of suggestions in his work as to what should companies and individuals do in order to cope up with the increasing rate of globalization. Overall it may be said that Friedman clearly brings out the benefit of globalization. With all the goodness narrated by Friedman with respect to the advancements in information and Communications Technology, there are also a few aspects of his work that have been left unnoticed. Globalization is indeed the most important of trends of the present times but it is not necessary that the unanimous acceptance of globalization has to be on common grounds. It has been since the last decade of the twentieth century that this term ‘Globalization’ was coined to signify a discourse involving economic, social and politics. Policy making strengthens immensely with this concept. It may very well be asserted that the term is associated with a number of meanings and no unanimous decision prevails among the so called ‘Globalized Personnel’ as to its literal meanings and the ills associated with it. The Friedman’s (2005) argument that, “In a flat world you can innovate without having to emigrate”, does not seem realistic as the physical location of a person matters a lot. The levels of activities in different parts of the world vary due to innumerable factors and are thus inconsistent. Concentrations of certain activities are high at very few places and these places can easily be figured out as red regions or highlighted regions. These red regions may be dens of immense globalization and technological advancement based activities. Richard Florida (2005) termed these concentrated areas as spikes. The main factors/reasons that are helpful in the establishment of the counter perspective are as follows: High population areas in the world are urban areas. These show a clear picture of a divide between two significant sects of population and also identify the persistent importance of geo-location. The areas of world emitting more light can be seen as more active in terms of economy. Again, these are few as compared to the whole population of the world. The rate of research work done in order to improve the socio-economic situation all over the world is strictly higher at few of the places on the globe. Some places are clearly identified with reference to the patents filed and the scientific activities like Silicon Valley at San Francisco Bay. Richard Florida (2005) used topography terms to highlight and discriminate different levels of activities. The metaphors are referenced and explained below, The city areas that are actually high innovation areas resemble “peaks” of mountains. The intermediate level of activity at production and service units is compared with the “hills”. The places with least economic and innovative activities like rural areas are termed as “valleys”. The notion of peaks or spikes actually violates the idea of flatness that is introduced by Friedman (2005). Especially the doctrine of ‘no need to emigrate’ is hindered due to the imbalance in opportunities to innovate at different places of world. The New York City’s economic activity can easily be compared to the Russian economy. The economy of whole US is mostly based on approximately forty seven regions overall. The rest of the locations thus definitely have low potential of innovation that may invoke migration from low activity areas to high activity areas. Here the understanding of static situations like peaks can be altered to a more productive and meaningful notion of ‘relative rate of change’. The snap shot method may mislead and may not be used as a strong reason for argument against Friedman. The dynamics of the processes provide more authentic basis for the counter argument. Friedman believes that the importance of cities as economic centers or hubs will reduce with the passage of time. The analysis of dynamics paints a different picture though. The figures quoted by Richard Florida (2005) in discrete manner were that the 30% of the world’s population belonged to the urban areas in 1950, whereas currently almost 50% people live in urban areas of the world. The dynamics if analyzed will highlight that the rate of migration was not uniform. The reasons like industrialization and better communication infrastructure may slow down this rate but the importance of cities will never diminish. The people who want to be the part of innovations and want to grow rapidly would definitely switch to high opportunity areas like cities that are always considered as centers of economy and growth. The cities have been polishing the talents of people on an extensively higher rate as compared to the rural areas that exhibit low activity. This aspect remains valid even with the concept of a flat world. The distances and rate of shifts may be altered but the direction would remain the same i.e. from low activity areas to higher activity areas. Another aspect that goes against the reasoning of Friedman is increased profitability due to globalization. The worldwide enhancements in the access or reachability to new products play a key role in the optimization of returns to the economic sector. As a result of which the rate of innovations increases proportionally. In other words it would be like increased heights of spikes as per topographical metaphors. Considering the pace of development and the rate of change, Friedman’s idea regarding the origination of new innovation centers seems to have a rationale. Friedman mentions the cities of Shenzen and Banglore in this regard. These cities are mainly related to manufacturing, thus can be considered as of moderate state like ‘hills’ as per Richard (2005). There is a high possibility that due to the need of continuous improvement these cities may take a new form of centers of creativity. The profit and investment associated to the economic activity in these regions may become compelling agents of change. However the pace is expected to be very slow. Certain queries that that arises here are, Wouldn’t there be efforts done to maintain the profit levels at current economic hubs for smooth sailing of businesses? Change or switching always costs. The current times witness scarcity of resources in terms of raw materials and workforce both. A change of setup would definitely go against the business policies. This would definitely ensure a status quo. Wouldn’t that hinder the rate of flatness or the flatness overall? Friedman (2005) describes high level of connectivity as a reason of flatness, while on the other hand the connectivity (better access to new products) would add more luminescence to the currently illuminated areas. The natural tendency of wealth accumulators or capitalists is to maintain a constant working class by restricting wages or salaries to certain limits. Cheaper and better work force helps greatly in profit optimization. Friedman (2005) describes outsourcing and offshoring as the means of virtual relocations of businesses. However the investors’ points of view may be different. They can think of outsourcing and offshoring as tools for achieving cheaper work force available round the clock. Friedman (2005) himself highlights the possibility of uniform dispersion of working opportunities without non-uniform distribution of wealth. So, if the connectivity flattens the world without uniform distribution of wealth then there are high chances of emergence of new centers with simultaneous economic crisis at current activity hubs. In other words there would be a definite discrimination maintained throughout and the concept of flatness of world does not seem to flourish. REFERENCES: Friedman, T.H. 2005. The world is flat. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Florida, R. (2005). The World is Spiky. Atlantic Monthly.  [online] Available at:< http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/images/issues/200510/world-is-spiky.pdf > [Accessed 07 December 2011]. Read More