The Flat World

I've recently been reading Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, in which he describes the rising impact of globalization on our modern world and the forces which led to this rise. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to modern wireless communication technology, Friedman describes how the world is quickly becoming a place in which participation is based not on your location but rather your desire.

This flattening of the world means that more people are playing in the same field. If I want to get the top programming jobs, I don't just need to be the best at BYU or the best in Utah; I'm competing against Romanians, Indians, Russians, and Africans as well. As the world becomes flatter and smaller, location matters less and less. Telecommuting is becoming increasingly feasible in technical fields, so I can't just rely on my proximity to major companies any longer.

Competition isn't the only result of the flattening world, though.  International collaboration has the odd twist that there is no supreme governing body.  The United Nations, NAFTA, and other such organizations may have some say in the trade relations of various nations, but there is no Supreme Court Justice or universal code of laws to which all nations have agreed.  Many nations with which we collaborate may still have gross human rights violations.  Taxation issues aren't as clear-cut, labor compensation laws will vary—overall, these increase of globalization increases the complexity involved in doing business.

There are moral issues as well.  If Mexican or Chinese laborers will build your Go-Kart for 15% the cost of building it in the United States, should a businessman be required to take into account the working conditions of those laborers?  Regardless of the legality of such things, I feel that ethically, it's a concern.  The globalization of the economy forces us to confront issues we might never have faced before.

Technology is a good thing; it helps us be more efficient, more productive, more healthy, more focused, and more able.  There's no question about these things.  But we need to be aware of the consequences before we dash headlong in to the future.  We need to pay attention to our surroundings.  We need to be sure that technology doesn't turn us into slaves to the economy.  We need to be sure to keep our eyes up, carefully watching the coming changes.  We need to be sure that as the world goes flat, we don't get caught underneath.

The Silent Uprising

There has been a lot of talk lately about the recent Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame) interview at the SXSW conference.  Audience members, who felt that Sarah Lacy handled the interview poorly, began to call out for an open Q&A session.  Tired of Lacy's interviewing style, the audience protested and ultimately got its way.  The interesting part of the story, though, isn't the audience reaction—it's the technology that led up to it.  At last year's SXSW conference, a social coordination tool called Twitter was introduced.

Traditional etiquette dictates that audience members remain relatively quiet while attending an event out of respect for the presenters.  In the pre-Web-2.0 world, this meant that apart from a quick note to your neighbor, nobody shared ideas until after the event had ended.  The new web has changed that, though; the Zuckerberg uprising was build of the collective feedback of the audience through Twitter.  A few discontented listeners in the back row began complaining online, other responded, and before long the crowd had coordinated a protest without speaking a word.

There's no question that user-generated content is changing our world.  Now we just wait to see how.