What's Been Happening While We've Been Asleep at the Wheel?

In America, life is grand, or for lack of a better word, ignorant. Someone once said that ignorance was bliss, which is sometimes true because sometimes is better to not know. However, in this case, we have been ignorant too long. It is better to know and we need to wake up. Imagine you are driving your car down a highway, and you accidentally nod off. You now have no control of your car. It may stay straight and continue to go down the road, and it may not. If you do wake up you realize that you were out because the scenery around you is now different, and if you don’t, you will continue until you crash. This has been America for some years now; we have been asleep at the wheel, in our own worlds blissfully unaware of life going on around us. We must wake up before we crash, because just like a car, the crash stops you and will damage your car maybe even to the point of no repair, and could even kill you.

Thomas Friedman discusses his concerns on globalization and the readily flattening world in his book, “The World Is Flat.” He starts off his journey when on a trip to Bangalore he realizes that he is not in Kansas anymore. All around him are advertisements for American companies like Pizza Hut and HP while he plays golf. He also encounters Indian workers that are working for American companies (outsourcing at its finest). They have adopted American accents and American names as well. Finally, his last reality check comes when he visits Infosys Technologies and sees their huge conference room with their millions of screens that allows them to talk to people from around the globe, like their producers and supplies and manufacturers, at the same time via satellite and teleconferencing technology. On his way out the head of this giant company tells Friedman that the playing field is being leveled, and the more Friedman thinks about this the more he realizes that he is right. Friedman was asleep at the wheel, just like the rest of America. However, once woken up, realizing that damage was being done, he was eager to make up lost time.

According to Friedman we went through three major forms of globalization, and I guess in his lack of creativity he decided to name them 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Globalization 1.0 occurred from about 1492 to about 1800, where the factors were who had the best technology (horse power and wind power) to travel. They wanted to shrink the world and bring it together and did so through exploration. This shrunk the world from a size large to a size medium. Globalization 2.0 occurred from roughly 1800 to 2000, where the elements of change were the companies and multinational corporations. The shrunk the world from a size medium to a size small by having front all over the world and catering all over the world and by outsourcing. These elements were driven at first by transportation advances like the railroad and ships and then by telecommunication advances like the internet, phones, and tons of other factors that keep people connected from far distances. We take things like email and phones for granted but see how useful they have been by looking at our grandparents who marvel at these creations and how you have friends in other countries. Back then, they didn’t even know people in other states. That was unchartered