Technology. It seems like a simple word we all know, that most of us have grown up with, yet we know so little about. I feel as if I am very tech savvy, but I am learning new and wonderful things everyday. I have been reading a book titled, The World is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Further Updated and Expanded, 2007), by Thomas L. Friedman, that opens your eyes to the world of technology, and how fast and rampant our lives are changing due to this newly discovered phenomenon. He explains Globalization, and the ability for us to communicate with each other as humans, has taken three parts, Globalization 1.0, Globalization 2.0, and simply enough, Globalization 3.0. In my mind I see these as a scale. Globalization 1.0 took over three hundred years, starting with Christopher Columbus in 1492-1800, and really started the communication trade. Globalization 2.0 took two hundred years, from 1800-2000, and really saw a boom towards the end of the 20th century, no thanks in part to the Great Depression and both of the World Wars. We just started Globalization 3.0, and it seems that the sky may not be the only limit. I cannot fathom the abilities we will have to communicate with each other if Globalization 3.0 lasts one hundred years. I think back to Christopher Columbus and his days, and how much time and effort was used to communicate with someone halfway across the world. It took him multiple ships stocked with a full crew and over a decade to make contact on four separate occasions with the new world. It takes me mere seconds to speak with a customer service agent half way across the world with only a few clicks of my mouse. That is if I am not having connectivity issues to my WiFi! The information I have learned from Friedman was written almost a decade ago, and the advances we have had since, have been astronomical. Technology is moving so fast, it is almost impossible to grasp the advances we have seen, let alone explain them, but I am excited to see the direction it takes us.
I believe Friedman hits it on the head when he discusses the fall of the Berlin Wall and what that meant on moving forward and ushering in Globalization 3.0. He explains that the world could not be seen globally when the wall was up. There were Western policies and Eastern policies, and it was blocking the world from operating as a single market. Once the wall fell, it opened up every avenue for this to occur. I was too young to know at the time what this all meant, and the impact it would have on my life. All I remember is the famous quote from President Ronald Reagan, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Once the wall came down, I feel Friedman perceived this as the beginning of new era of knowledge, and he could see the impact this would have on life. The world was a better place with the wall gone, and now the world could begin to communicate from every corner of the globe. The playing field had been leveled, and everyone noticed. As Friedman stated, “To put it another way, the fall of the wall enhanced the free movement of best practices.”
Gone are the days of the dial up connection, having to watch your minute usage, AOL Keywords and chat rooms, getting kicked off the web because someone picked up the phone or Heaven forbid, someone calling the house for your sibling. These all may be a thing of my past, but I will never forget the struggles as a young teenage boy waiting 10 minutes for a web page to load, or losing my chat session with hot babes. This was all possible because of the Netscape browser. The creation of the web browser allowed anyone with a PC and a modem to share files and made it seamless, efficient, but overall it made it quick. It brought information to your fingertips, no matter your age, and allowed big businesses, governments and individuals to connect like never before. Finally everyone could connect with everyone. It was the world wide web delivered on a disc. Although Netscape paved the way for other browsers, it succumbed to its own success and overwhelming pressure from Microsoft. Netscape boomed so quickly, it could not keep up with the demand of business, and eventually sold out to AOL. As Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO said, “We were profitable almost from the start. Netscape was not a dot-com. We did not participate in the dot-com bubble. We started the dot-com bubble.”
Works Cited
Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat, Further Updated and Expanded, Release 3.0
New York: Picador, 2007
President Ronald Reagan, Berlin Wall Speech, West Berlin: June 12, 1987
Do you think that in a hundred years or so some one will invent the 3D hologram phones they have in movies? I mean I look at talking to someone across the world as no big deal, but in all reality it is a huge deal, like you said Columbus had to use many ships to communicate with someone across the world.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's fascinating how Netscape was the basis for everything back then. It's really interesting to see how it evolved from something so small but so revolutionary to what we have now.
ReplyDeleteI bet these will be in everyones hands in 10 years!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't imagine the world without it!
ReplyDelete