The World is Flat: How Companies Cope summary

Companies that have managed to grow today are those that are most prepared to change. They are the ones who recognize everything that can done thanks to the triple convergence, and have developed their own strategies to exploit it, instead of trying to resist it. Friedman highlights some of their rules and strategies:
-rule #1: when the world goes flat, and you are feeling flattened, reach for a shovel and dig inside yourself. Don't try to build walls.
-rule #2: the small shall act big. One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big. The key to being small and acting big is being quick to take advantage of all the new tools for collaboration to reach farther, faster, wider, and deeper.
-rule #3: the big shall act small. One way big companies learn to flourish in the flat world is by learning how to act really small by enabling their customers to act really big.
-rule #4: the best companies are the best collaborators. In the flat world, more and more businesses will be done through collaboration within and between companies because the next layers of value creation (such as technology, marketing, biomedicine, manufacturing) are becoming so complex that no single firm or department is going to be able to master them alone.
-rule #5: in a flat world, the best companies stay healthy by getting regular chest X-rays, and then selling the results to their clients.
-rule #6: the best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow larger, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists, not to save money by firing more people.
-rule #7: outsourcing is also for idealists.

The World is Flat: This is not a Test summary

Friedman states that getting Americans to rally around compassionate flatism is much more difficult than getting them to rally around anticommunism. America is going to have to sort out what to keep, what to discard, what to adapt, what to adopt, where to redouble our efforts, and where to intensify our focus. The flattening of the world is going to be disruptive to both traditional and developed societies. The weak will fall further behind faster, the traditional will feel the force of modernization more profoundly, the new will get turned into old quicker, and the developed will be challenged by the underdeveloped more profoundly. The rest of the chapter explains five action areas built around compassionate flatism:
-leadership: the job of every politician in America should be to help educate and explain to people what world they are living in and what they need to do if the want to thrive within it. But the problem is that most politicians don't have a clue about the flat world.
-muscles: how government and business can enhance every worker's lifetime employability, which requires replacing fat (lifetime employment) with muscle (lifetime employability).
-good fat: e.g. social security, wage insurance (which should be added).
-social activism: the relationship between global corporations and their own moral consciousness needs to be sorted out.
-parenting: helping individuals adapt to a flat world is also the job of parents. They need to know about the world in which their child is growing up in.

The World is Flat: The Quiet Crisis summary

In this chapter Friedman explains how America is not ready to compete, is not getting every individual to think about he or she can upgrade his or her educational skills, and is not investing in the secrets of America's "sauce." This chapter further explains what will happen if we don't change the fact that we aren't doing those things. The rest of the chapter is broken into sections titled "Dirty Little Secret..."
-#1: The Numbers Gap: the generation of scientists and engineers are reaching retirement years and are not being replaced in the numbers as they must be if America wants to remain ahead of the pack. Half of America's scientists are 40 years or older, and the average age is steadily rising.
-#2: The Education Gap at the Top: America is not educating or interesting enough of our own young people in math, science, and engineering.
-#3: The Ambition Gap: Not only is outsourcing cheaper and efficient, but the quality and productivity boost is huge. When jobs are sent abroad, companies not only save 75% on wages but also get 100% increase in productivity.
-#4: The Education Gap at the Bottom: the public school system. Delegated education power to local school boards organized by wealth.
-#5: The Funding Gap: special research and projects need more funding
-#6: The Infrastructure Gap: the smartest countries and cities in the world are offering their residents the fasted broadband at the lowest prices to the widest areas. The flat-world platform makes innovation and production more efficient but Americans can't take advantage of it because we don't have the infrastructure or the education to do so.

Friedman adds that our fate can be different, but only if we start doing things differently.

The World is Flat: The Untouchables summary

Friedman states that in the flat world there is no such thing as an American job. There is just a job, and it will go to the best, smartest, most productive, or cheapest
worker, no matter where he or she resides. The key to surviving in a flat world is figuring out how to make yourself an "untouchable." These are the people whose jobs
cannot be outsourced, digitized, or automated. The untouchables in a flat world fall into three categories:
-those who are "special or specialized" such as star athletes, celebrities, brain surgeons, and the top cancer researcher. These are the people who can never be outsourced, automated, or made tradable by electric transfer.
-those who are "localized" and "anchored". These are the people whose jobs must be done in a specific location, either because they require special knowledge or because they require face-to-face interaction. These would include barbers, waiters, dentists, chefs, plumbers, nurses, repairmen, gardeners, divorce lawyers, etc.
-those who were in formerly "middle-class jobs", such as assembly line workers, data entry workers, securities analysts, etc. These are jobs that were once considered nontradable but are now considered tradable thanks to the ten flatteners.

New middle jobs are popping up, but to get and keep these jobs you need certain skills that can make you special, specialized, or anchored, and therefore untouchable.
Such new jobs fall under the following categories:
-great collaborators and orchestrators (those who collaborate with others or orchestrate collaboration between companies)
-great synthesizers (these are people like SEOs)
-the great explainers (managers, teachers, writers, producers, etc. who can see complexity but explain it with simplicity)
-the great leveragers (combining the best of what computers can do with the best of what humans can do)
-the great adaptors (those who can adapt and are versatile)
-the green people (the environmentalists who can figure out how to do things with less energy and fewer emissions)
-the passionate personalizers (such as the lemonade man at Camden Yards who adds a personal" touch to the lemonade)
-the great localizers (small and medium-sized businesses)

The World is Flat: America & Free Trade summary

This chapter is about how even as the world gets flat, America as a whole will benefit more by sticking to the general principles of free trade than by building walls. However, a policy of free trade is not enough by itself. It must be accompanied by a domestic strategy of upgrading the education of every American, and a foreign strategy of opening restricted markets all over the world.

Although jobs are often lost in bulk to outsourcing of large companies, new jobs are also being created by small companies that you can't see. New jobs and new specialties are continually being created. America as a whole will do fine in a flat world with free trade if it continues to provide knowledge workers who are able to produce idea-based goods that can be sold globally and who are able to fill the knowledge jobs that will be created. There is no limit to the number of idea-generated jobs in the world. There are infinite industries to be created, infinite business to be started, and infinite jobs to be done. The only limiting factor is human imagination.

One new specialty job that is growing is search engine optimizers (SEOs). SEOs study algorithms that are being used by the major search engines to produce their search results, and then try to design marketing and Web strategies that will push their company up the rankings.

Analysis of Ethics in Film - Office Space

The movie Office Space is about a man named Peter Gibbons who works for a company called Initech. He doesn't like working there, and really doesn't like his boss. He goes to see a hypnotherapist who dies while Peter is still hypnotized. As a result, Peter has a carefree attitude and just does what he wants to. Two of Peter's friends who work for Initech are going to be laid off, so Peter comes up with a plan to release a virus into Initech's system that will put money into their bank accounts.

The ethical issue in this film is planting a virus into a computer system that will put money in their own account. Another ethical issue is workplace principles. The boss does not tell one man that he no longer works there, and continues to let him work there even though he doesn't receive a paycheck. The man does not know that he does not actually work there. Also, Peter, who does not do much work and who skips work a lot, does not get laid off. Instead, people who actually do work are the ones who get laid off. Those who do nothing are rewarded more than those who do something.

The media does not play a role in this film.

I think this film does realistically portray ethical issues. It is not uncommon for an employee who is about to get laid off to "get back" at the company, whether it is by releasing a virus like the guys in this movie did, or something else. I do not think someone would deliberately not tell an employee that he or she has been fired/layed off. So that part of the movie was unrealistic.

This film might make people think they can do something like the three guys in this movie did and release a virus or something to get money put into their accounts. In reality though, people could actually do this. They were scared that they would get caught, and Peter was even going to turn himself in because he didn't want to go to prison. So this shows that there are consequences for releasing a virus like that. Even though they didn't get caught, if the building had not burned down they would have been caught and would've had to go to prison.

Law enforcement was not present in this film.

Current Event 12

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15916822/
The Associated Press
November 27, 2006

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgian-based bank data transfer agency, broke European privacy laws when it gave personal data to U.S. authorities for use in anti-terror investigations. The data was transferred secretly without notifying Belgian authorities. The data transfer between the U.S. Treasury and SWIFT began after the September 11th attacks. SWIFT argues that it had no choice but to abide by the U.S. subpoenas for the data. If it had refused to give the U.S. the information it would have faced fines and possibly jail time.

Those involved are SWIFT, the EU panel that investigated the data transfer, the U.S. Treasury, and Belgium.

This affects people whose bank data may have been transferred to the U.S. Treasury.

The ethical issue addressed is whether or not it is ethical for SWIFT to transfer the data, knowing there are laws against it. SWIFT is in a tough spot, because if they do it (which they did) they get in trouble with the European authorities, but if they don't do it, they get in trouble with the U.S.

The impact to society is that some people had their data transferred to the U.S., even though a European law prevents it. Also, this makes it hard to figure out whose laws to follow when they conflict.

I think it depends on whose side you're on whether it's good or bad. It is bad for the Europeans, but good for the United States since we have the data.

The World is Flat: The Great Sorting Out questions

1. Friction and boundaries that divide nation-states are disappearing, and thus will pose a sharper challenge to them and to particular cultures, values, national identities, democratic traditions, and bonds of restraint that have previously provided protection for workers and communities. Some people will welcome the disappearance of the boundaries as an opportunity to expand in any direction with a new set of tools. Others will not welcome the disappearance of boundaries and will feel like they are in a free fall with nothing to hold them up and nothing to protect their privacy. Some will feel liberated while others will feel disoriented. It will become stressful to societies to undergo change. Networks can also spread rumors, such as the one that supposedly told Jews not to go to work at the World Trade Center on 9/11. One question that arises is whose values will govern a particular company and whose interests will that company respect and promote? Global companies will have to undergo much adaptation. When a corporation has operations in different countries around the world, it is hard to tell which country the corporation is associated with. For example, IBM has headquarters in the United States, China, and Japan, and the CEOs are from these countries as well. So is it a Chinese company, a Japanese company, or an American company? The impact on American citizens is that corporate America has done very well by aligning itself with the flat world. The bad part about this is when America sends jobs overseas, the person who did the job over here will either have to move to another country or will have to find a new job. And as more and more jobs are being sent overseas, the harder it is to find the same type job in America that utilizes your skills. One example of a legal ramification is India vs. Indiana. An Indian consulting firm won the contract to upgrade the unemployment department of the state of Indiana. Indiana was outsourcing the very department that would cushion the people of Indiana from the effects of outsourcing. This became a campaign issue for the Republicans and Democrats.

2. When Friedman discusses "Multiple Identity Disorder" he means that the tensions among our identities as consumers, employees, citizens, taxpayers, and shareholders are going to come into conflict. The conflict is between customer and worker, with the company in the middle. When you take out the middleman of business and totally flattened the supply chain, you also take a certain element of humanity out of life. As consumers we want the cheapest drugs that the global supply chain can give us, but as citizens we want and need the government to oversee and regulate the supply chain, even if it means preserving or adding friction.

Current Event 11

http://www.news.com/
CNet News.com
by Joris Evers
11/13/06

Microsoft has added a feature to Internet Explorer 7 that will turn the address bar in the browser green when visiting a legitimate Web site. The green address bar will only be available when visiting a site of corporations--small businesses are excluded. The CA Browser Forum is working on final guidelines that would include all legitimate Web sites, but it could take a while to complete. IE7 will display a green address bar when the user goes to a Web site that has obtained an "extended validation certificate", or EV SSL, given only to incorporated entities. The green bars will not be available until early 2007.

Those involved are Microsoft and the CA Browser Forum.

Those affected by it are Internet users (those who use IE7). It also affects corporations because they will have to obtain the EV SSL. It will also affect the businesses who are not able to get the EV SSLs because their site will not be considered "legitimate" by IE7.

The ethical issue addressed is that some sites that are legitimate and just aren't for a corporation will not have a green address bar, leading people to believe their site may not be legit. If someone visits a site and it does not have a green address bar, a user will not be likely to continue viewing the site, when there may not be anything harmful about the site.

The impact to society is that it will help protect people from phishing scams.

I think this is a good thing because it will help people to see which sites are legit and which aren't.

Analysis of Ethics in Film - WarGames

The film WarGames is about a teenager (Matthew Broderick) named David Lightman who tries to hack into the system of a company who makes computer games, so he can play the games for free. He thinks he accesses the computer company's site when he sees a list with games such as Chess and Backgammon, but the list also has games that David doesn't recognize, such as "Global Thermonuclear War". David decides to play "Global Thermonuclear War", and he has a choice to play as the U.S. or the Soviet Union, so he chooses the Soviet Union. He then gets to choose what cities in the U.S. he wants to hit with nuclear missiles. As it turns out, David actually hacked into the WOPR, a war-game at NORAD that simulates attacks so the U.S. can be ready if the Soviets try to attack. When the computers at NORAD showed that the "Soviets" had launched their weapons and were going to attack the U.S., they thought it was real, and did not know that someone had hacked into the system...but even when they caught David, they thought he was working for the Soviets and that the attack was real. David stops playing the game, but the computer (Joshua) continues to play--its ultimate goal is to win the game.

The ethical issue in this film is hacking. David hacked into his school's computer system to change his grades, he hacked into a travel agency and booked 2 plane tickets to Paris, and then the biggest of all was that he hacked into the WOPR at NORAD.

In this film, the media just reported what they believed to be true--which was that the U.S. thought they were going to be attacked by the Soviet Union. Since NORAD believed this to be true also, the media had no reason to suspect otherwise.

I think the ethical issue would've been more realistic back when this movie was made than it is now. Back in the early 1980s, computer systems probably were not as secure as they are now, so it would not have been that difficult to hack into. The way David hacked into the system did not seem all that complicated, which makes it seem somewhat realistic that it could actually happen--back then at least. I believe that if the movie had been made in the past several years, he would not have been able to hack in that way because the system would've been more secure.

I think this film might make people think they can hack into a system like NORAD's since it did seem rather simple.

The law enforcement officials in this movie were jerks. They would not listen to anything David had to say, and they wouldn't hardly even listen to Dr. Falken, who is the one who created the WOPR. They actually thought that David was working for the Soviets. They didn't even look into what David was telling them to see if he was telling the truth. I believe in reality, the law enforcement officials would've at least checked in to what David was saying.

I would hope that someone could not hack into a system like NORAD's now. I admit that I was a bit on edge when David was hacking in and playing the "game".

The World is Flat: The Triple Convergence (summary of chapter)

Around the year 2000, the ten flatteners began converging and working together in ways that created a new, flatter, global playing field. Both businesses and individuals began adopting new habits, skills, and processes to get the most out of it. They moved to a horizontal way of creating value. Other countries eventually joined in (e.g. China, India, the former Soviet Empire) and with their tools were able to collaborate with everyone else.

Convergence I: The convergence of the ten flatteners created a global, web-enabled platform for many forms of collaboration. This platform allows people, businesses, companies, and universities from all over the world to collaborate with each other. More people in more places have the power to access the flat world platform.

Convergence II: "Horizontilization" is the convergence of managers, innovators, business consultants, business schools, designers, IT specialists, CEOs, and workers so that they all collaborate together horizontally instead of vertically. For example, HP collaborated with Cisco and Nokia to develop a camera/cell phone that beams it digitized pictures to an HP printer, which prints them out. Southwest Airlines allows their customers to download their boarding passes at home.

Convergence III: Countries all over the world began developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration. New players are popping up very fast, and the new forms of collaboration are available to more people. Those who learn the habits and skills the quickest will be the winners.

For the United States, triple convergence was lost with 9/11 and with the Enron scandal. The author of the book states that when he was researching for the book and was interviewing CEOs and technologists from major companies both American-based and foreign, they all described what he (the author) came to call the triple convergence. However, most of them were not telling the public or the politicians.

Current Event 10

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/cnet/2006-11-06-wikipedia-virus_x.htmBy Tom Espiner
November 6, 2006

Hackers placed a link to malicious code on the German version of Wikipedia. The article was for the W32.Blaster worm, and it included false information about a new version of the Lovesan/MS Blaster worm, with links to a fix, which turned out to be malicious code. Wikipedia removed the links once they were discovered, but Wikipedia archives old versions of articles, so the hackers were still able to send links to those entries through a mass-mailed e-mail. Wikipedia confirmed that it has erased all versions of the page.

Those involved are the website Wikipedia, the hackers who placed the code on Wikipedia, and the anti-virus vendor Sophos.

This affects people who clicked on the link thinking they were downloading a fix for the worm.

The ethical issue addressed is hacking and spreading malicious code.

The impact to society is that many people use Wikipedia, so if more hackers get this idea, they could load malicious code pretty much anywhere on the site.

This is a very very bad thing, especially because Wikipedia is so widely used. I use Wikipedia quite often, so I am now going to be leery about what I click on.

Analysis of Ethics in Film - Hackers

The movie Hackers is about a group of hackers. They find out about a very harmful computer virus that is going to be released, and try to stop the virus. In the meantime, the Secret Service believes that the hackers are the ones responsible for the virus.

The ethical issue in this movie is hacking. Although the group of hackers ended up preventing the virus from being released, they did not have permission to hack into the system and stop the virus. A few of the hackers did hack into systems with cruel purposes. One of the hackers made the sprinkler system at the school go off at a certain time, another manipulated the phone system to make free international calls, and they also put false information into the computer system about the head Secret Service agent who was trying to catch them.

The movie portrayed the hackers as being a "club". The movie made it seem as if hacking is the only thing these people did, and they had this one hangout place that they seemed to go to whenever they were not in school. It also made it seem as if hacking was "the thing to do."

I do not think this movie was realistic in portraying ethical issues. Some of the hacking things probably really could've been done (such as setting of the sprinkler system and Dade getting himself in a class with Kate) but the main hacking thing and all of them working together on computers in the train station to try to stop the virus seem pretty far-fetched.

People might think hackers are really like how the movie portrays them to be. But I highly doubt this is the way hackers really are. I don't think they have this one hangout downtown where they all go to everyday. It may also make people think that if you hack into a system to prevent something bad from happening, that you will be a "hero", when in reality if you are not supposed to be hacking into the system, it is illegal, so there should be consequences, unlike in the movie.

The law enforcement officials seemed totally incompetent, especially the head Secret Service agent. They seemed to know nothing about hacking and treated the hackers as if they were the equivalent of a mass murderer who was on the run. In reality, if someone gets arrested for hacking, I seriously doubt there would be a whole group of agents with guns standing outside your window or your shower to grab you whenever you turn around.

I think this is the most far-fetched movie we have watched thus far.