Friedman’s view on the infrastructure of the world as it enters the information age has been intriguing, seeing the different stages society took to become connected and integrated to become not many societies across over 100 countries but merging into one singular society over the entire world only separated by governments, religions, and ethnic groups. One of the many ways this occurred is referred to by Friedman as a 3 stage globalization the first being the journey of Christopher Columbus expanding society’s view of the true size of the earth and revealing that the earth is a round surface geographically, the second was the reconnection of the world through changes in transportation, the invention of the telephone, and many other improvements in society’s major forms of communication, and the third is the current boom of the information age with the development of computers, the internet, cell phones, and continuous other improvements on the way we live our lives that will come about in the near future.
To look at each of these globalizations more easily you see an expansion of the world in the first globalization which in turn moved to actually limit our abilities to communicate, expanding from what could have been a few weeks to send a message to what could be months or even years as the eastern world colonized the Americas. This forced a need for better communication which made many eager to find a solution. As a society people feel the need to communicate and through this need for human contact methods of communication that we would’ve never thought up before arise and serve to surprise us.
The Second Globalization served to repair the rift created in the expansion of the world as society previously knew it, with the invention of the telegraph and telephone people could communicate by sound instead of through just the written word. Through the development of steam engines, airplanes, and cars people could travel faster and more efficiently. It just wasn’t fast enough and someone got creative.
The computer was born in this third globalization and turned the world upside down in the matter of 30 years, going from a simple digital interface that simplified various activities but didn’t do much to assist communication, to being interconnected but complicated to easily communicate with, to finally with the development and invention of the internet browser allowing communication to be simple and usable for virtually anyone willing to learn. Computers have revolutionized our lives and change every aspect of how we communicate with each other. Friedman talks about one of the major leaps in connecting the world was the invention of the NetScape Browser which Friedman views as one of the most significant accomplishments involving the connection of the world. NetScape was an extremely significant stride and is a shame to have been lost in the rat race.
The story behind NetScape’s rise shows the innate desire of people’s desire for communication. As soon as it released it boomed with the internet crowds and those that would’ve otherwise been unable to access the internet due to lack of technical knowledge. Though it also reveals how quickly society is moving in the development of these technologies, as Internet Explorer was developed many moved away from NetScape due to the cost to use the browser when they could use Internet Explorer for free as well as the easy accessibility of Internet Explorer. If NetScape had found a way to provide their browser for free as well as to find a way to integrate it into the main core of an operating system they could still be a successful browser although somewhere down the road there would be obstacles the possibilities of what NetScape could’ve become were endless but it got trampled by the rush of innovation around it. NetScape showed the speed that things were changing at and looking at the rate of speed that things are ever changing at you can see that we haven’t seen a lull in the development of new technologies.
Friedman speaks about major changes in the world that really caused a boom in our technology and the way the world conducts it’s communications. The specific event he brings up that really changed everything was the fall of the Berlin Wall, through the fall in the Berlin wall the world began seeing itself as a global ecosystem instead of being individual nations supporting themselves. This was huge for the development of communication not by just the people but by governments, by merchants, by markets, etc. The world market wasn’t closed the world market was ramping up it’s trafficking countries would begin relying on outlying countries allowing a community to form; trading products, working together to develop new technologies, and empowering a global push for easier, more efficient, inexpensive communications.
One of the major aspects of this reliance and communication is to outsource jobs for cheaper and more efficient systems, having been in a call center for almost a year now I have seen the outsourcing issue as well as the benefits. Outsourcing does remove many people within the US to lose jobs and the way Friedman addresses it I can see his points about people being removed from the menial labor jobs to allow progress and advancement. I also see the view from the workers losing their jobs to outsourcing and although it does support the economy it also can ruin the economy by putting those consumers out of work forcing them to either go on welfare or begin to stockpile anything and everything and cease spending. To adapt is within our nature and to outsource jobs is an adaptation that is necessary for the development of many different technologies and systems, making them more successful as well as cost effective.
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