Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The World is Flat


Is the world actually flat or have we just made it seem smaller. I have just finished reading excerpts from the book The World is Flat by Thomas Frieldman. He has told me his ideas and how all of these ideas affect our world. He presented a total of 10 ideas. The top to that stuck out to me the most were outsourcing and offshoring. Outsourcing is where companies send work to other countries and have them do the work. There were a lot of pros and cons with this. Positives being that the work can be done faster, allows your company leverage in growth, and finally accesses to other resources. But the negatives to this could be it cost a lot of money and it sends jobs away. The other idea was offshoring; this is when companies take their business and go to a different country where they can produce products for a minimal cost.

            In this book I agree with the things he is talking about I just don’t like the idea of shipping our companies out to different countries and having them do the work for us. But I think that if I weren’t for all this technology we would be lost. The steroids of the computers are great too because this is how we communicate. The thing that surprised be about the flatteners was the part about the Berlin Wall. So after the wall was destroyed the Internet started up.  So I guess we have that to thank!

            I’m excited to get further in the Flat Classroom. As of know I loved watching and reading everyone’s handshake projects. I’m excited to start the project with people we don’t know I’m just scared that it will be confusing. I was really interested in the international people from this project. My questions were how they communicate with us. What is their native language? Can they understand everything we say? But anyways I have really enjoys the project so far and I would really enjoy doing a Skype session with everyone!
            So what have you enjoyed so far about this project? And also, what did you learn about the book?

12 comments:

  1. Great post Emily! Outsourcing might seem like the way of the future, but Im not sold quite yet. My favorite part about this project so far has been creating a slideshow about uploading because it also helps the world become a more "flat" place. I cant wait to see more blog posts from you.

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  2. Thanks Chase! I probably will be the way of the future.

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  3. I believe that instead of the world being flat it was just made smaller, it just makes more sense to me. This project has actually been pretty fun, I've learned a lot about what makes the world flat (Or smaller) that I didn't know before and the book helped me gain a better understanding of these things.

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  4. I agree that we would be lost without technology and the book taught me a number of things that I had no idea existed, like the ten flatteners. Reading from the book helped me understand what the term The World is Flat meant.

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  5. One thing I want to make more clear for you is that the fall of the Berlin Wall & the rise of the PC happened at the same time. Thus, it allowed for the changing shape of information. People could could more easily share information & find out what was going on around the world. Thus, other governments, countries, and citizens could see the potential of having a democratic society. We still see uprisings in communist countries. The spread of information is often times through technology. Some communists country try to filter this information as a way to "protect" and "control" their people.

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    1. Thanks for the clarification I now get more of what that means.

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  6. I also was very surprised that the fall of the Berlin Wall was considered a flattener. I have enjoyed meeting new people so far in this project, and I learned several things about the ten flatteners from the book. Great blog post overall!

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    1. Thanks! That is good you like the Flat Classroom Project.

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  7. My favorite thing about this project is meeting all these people over the flat classroom site. I learned as lot about the book but since I did the topic Supply-Chainnig I learned a lot about that. I really like your blog!

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  8. Thanks you glad to hear you learned a ton about your topic!

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  9. I like how you interperated the things in the first paraghaph.

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