Chad Branum

cbranum@coppellisd.com

EDT646

Assignment I – Article Review #1

01/23/06

It was very interesting reading some of the review articles that I found online regarding the book entitled “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. The first article that I decided to review and summarize was written by Roberto J. Gonzalez and was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, May 15, 2005. Below is the name and website address for this article:

Falling flat

As the world’s boundaries are worn smooth, Friedman examines changing horizons

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/15/RVGHLCL11V1.DTL

This book review starts off stating the point that “Friedman’s latest book, ‘The World Is Flat,’ is culturally misinformed, historically inadequate and intellectually impoverished.” This is a pretty strong statement. Gonzalez points out that the main objective of this book is to realize that our world is becoming more flat (interconnected). What are the long-term affects of this flattening? As our society becomes more “interconnected,” it is felt that industry is going to increase the amount of corporate capitalism that occurs. Because of this trend, businesses will ride the ship as far as it will go in order to increase their profit margins. Why is this concept important for us to understand? In this article, it is pointed out that if the United States, as well as other countries, don’t put more of an emphasis on creating more specialized workers, then we might be left behind and have a huge economic impact as well. For example, Gonzalez defines a point that Friedman makes in his book that “many of the companies that have laid off thousands of Bay Area employees (Santa Clara County alone lost 231,000 jobs between 2000 and 2004) have replaced them with workers in Asia.” By preparing for more specialized professions, society can help lessen the impact of this trend. Additionally, this article goes on to describe Friedman’s accounting of the fact that most of the global population doesn’t live in a “flat world.” Several reasons for this are described as cultural differences and historical reasons. Gonzalez appears to have an issue with Friedman’s overall “understanding of culture” and “shocking ignorance of history.”

In summary, I really liked the fact that Friedman argues that “cultures open to foreign ideas will blossom in the 21^st century, while closed cultures will wither.” I believe this as well. We have to find a way to better prepare our professionals of today and the students of tomorrow in order to meet these growing challenges. If not, we will be left behind!

Assignment I – Article Review #2

01/23/06

It was very interesting reading some of the review articles that I found online regarding the book entitled “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. The second article that I decided to review and summarize was written by Warren Bass and was published in the Washington Post on Sunday, April 3, 2005. Below is the name and website address for this article:

The Great Leveling

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17314-2005Mar31.html

This particular article review has some similar points of view to the first one that I reviewed from the San Francisco Chronicle. In this article, Bass points out that Friedman defines the “most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty-first century is the development of new players.” He also points out that we have transitioned out of “Globalization 2.0” and into “Globalization 3.0.” Friedman defines “Globalization 3.0” as people pursuing the outsourcing of services and technology work to foreign countries (India, China, Japan, etc.) largely due to the use of software, fiber-optic networks and the simple fact that “American workers no longer want low-wage, low-prestige jobs in America.” What has slowly led our society to such changes? This article defines Friedman’s reasons why he feels that the world has become flat and ultimately led to such globalization. “The world was flattened by 10 forces, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the discrediting of Soviet-style command economies; the 1995 Netscape IPO; the dot-com era overinvestment in the fiber-optic cables that such globalizing hubs rely upon to cheaply transmit data around the planet; search engines like Google; and such flat-world ‘steroids’ as PalmPilots, tiny laptops and the wireless technology.” As Bass notes, the foreign countries that take advantage of these changes and technologies over the years will have a bigger impact on our global economic society. Additionally, this article does briefly mention the fact that there are parts of the global population that live in poverty and do not live in a flat world. Friedman acknowledges the fact that “you cannot drive economic growth in a place where 50 percent of the people are infected with malaria or half of the kids are malnourished or a third of the mothers are dying of AIDS.”

In summary, I have never considered Friedman’s reasons for why he feels the world has flattened over the years. As I reflect upon those reasons, I tend to agree with each of them. Also, I am very concerned about the United States future role in the global economy. We need to educate ourselves more and take advantage of the resources that are available to us so that we do not get behind in the global marketplace. We have to start now!