The World Has Become Flatter

The world has become flatter

An analysis of "Thomas Friedman - The world is flat"

by Tim van Rijt

2043501

After listening to the lecture of Thomas Friedman, mixed feelings take control of me. Obviously he has a very interesting point and it would be naпve to say that he is absolutely wrong. Nonetheless I think he overlooked at some, in my opinion, important points.

For starters, he talks about "the 10 flatteners" and when I look at the list, it looks like it refers only to big companies like Nedcar. These companies can operate much more efficient thanks to the 10 flatteners. But are these 10 flatteners important when for example Ford wants to have a type of car built by Nedcar. Of course they help make the process of discussion easier, but the most important thing here is personal contact. That is what decides the choice of these big decisions.

Of course nowadays you can simulate a personal meeting thanks to a webcam and microphone or a videophone, but it still isn't the same. I work at a catering business where clients can rent 4 halls in one beautiful building (Castle Hoensbroek). There is not one client that made the decision of giving a party there without coming to the building first and have a talk with the manager of the catering I work for. How beautiful something can look, people need convincing before they take a decision. Everybody has doubts when they need to make an important decision. Through a videophone, these doubts cannot be taken away very easily. This has to be done by talking a walk together, get a coffee together or something like that. On a phone, every silence is very painful and therefore the conversations are more tense. In real life, these problems can be taken away by a good cup of coffee.

Another important positive point personal contact has, is that trust is a lot easier to gain. Through a videophone or webcam, you can only see a small part of the room the person is sitting in. When he looks away, you cannot see what he is doing. Maybe he is looking at the business' last month finances, but he could be looking at a football match. Every look in another direction makes the other person a bit more insecure. Also a change in facial expression can be misinterpreted. When your eyes are tired from the screen and you frown, the other person can think you are surprised. In real like you don't have to stare at one point that much, so your eyes won't be tired that easily.

When you think of personal contact as one of the most important things in the business world, there is one flattener that Thomas Freedman doesn't sum up: The airplane. I think this is a very important flattener. Thank to this invention, it isn't that hard to travel from New York to Amsterdam or Seoul, something that was an amazing and long trip before the airplane existed. The airplane makes it possible for businessmen to travel all around the world in little time and find out what would be best for his business. Not only can he travel to other countries to look if there is an opportunity for partnership or something like this, thanks to the airplane businessmen from all over the world can meet at important conferences or shows. Therefore networking is a lot easier thanks to the airplane. I think it is a mistake of Thomas Friedman that he left it out of his list of flatteners.

Also he talks about "Open sourcing/uploading", but I cannot see why this is such an important point for him. It makes it very easy to share your knowledge and of course in theory this is very good. We can see in the real world that a very big part of it is used for unimportant