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April 13, 2005
Flat Earth
"When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate".
I went to hear Tom Friedman speak the other day, about his new book The World is Flat. First of all, I strongly reccommend this book and I'm only 10 pages into it. The premise is that in the last four years, the international playing field has been leveled (flattened). He states, "It is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world."
I realized just how flat the world is, when I turned my cell phone on in a remote fishing village in Brazil and it worked identically to the way it does in the US. I could make and receive local US calls, exchange SMS messages, connect my laptop to the Internet wirelessly (Bluetooth -> GPRS) and generally behave as though I were home in Texas. Brazil was flat. The world is flat.
Posted by Jim at April 13, 2005 03:27 PM