Week 1- #1 The 10 Flatteners

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/266/

Flatteners:
1. 11-9-89 The berlin wall coming down/Windows coming up(windows 3.0)- End to separate Eastern and Western policies. Single Flat Plane
2. 8-9-95 Netscape goes public, internet comes alive, dotcom bubble starts
3. Workflow  All the software/standards that let work happen (Microsoft Office, etc.) people are able to work together on more things than ever before. Genesis moment of flattening- increased collaboration
4. Y2K Outsourcing- global collaboration
5. China Join WTO- Off shoring (move factories off shore)
6. Open sourcing, new collaboration, Linux operating system, Firefox( produced by a kid at Stanford and a kid in New Zealand)
7. Supply Chaining- what Walmart does- having a global supply chain
8. In sourcing- what UPS does- UPS does all of the work for companies like Nike and Toshiba. They transport the product but also do the work when the product gets to where its going (Papa Johns Delivery)
9. Informing- Google.
10. Steroids- File sharing, VOIP. Turbo charging the forms of collaboration, can do them anywhere, anytime.

Three Convergences:
1. 2000- All 10 flatteners converge. The flat world created.
2. Horizontalizing Ourselves. We are all learning to adapt to the flat world.
3. China, India, and Former Soviet Empire. all open up. We add 3 billion people to global workforce.

Are we living in a flat world?
When I first opened the video link I was like "holy cow, an hour and fifteeen minutes, there is now way I'm watching this whole thing." And about 5 minutes into it I was enthralled and didn't even notice
how long it had been on until it was over. I was a business major in undergrad, and am a Business Education major now, so this was right up my ally. I knew that a lot of this was happening, but this was a really great to see globalization in a different light. I was always trained to look at how globalization will affect my business some day, but this video shows how it affects us as individuals.

I think that our world is flattening. It isn't necessarily flat yet, but it definitely isn't round. I think that the world becomes more flat each and every day, but that it really varies by person. I feel like in so many ways our schools are participating in the digital revolution that is happening. So while parts of the world are very flat, our schools are not connected to it. When I was in school if our teachers wanted to show us a video they had to go check the VHS out of the library, and wheel down the TV/VHS cart. Today, I can grab my iPad pull up the video and plug it in to my projector or SMARTboard. I can bring them a video that was made with the newest information (even made that day) so that their education involves the newest and best information out there.