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Flatlined

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» We live in a flat world from Luca9200's blog
Thomas Friedman wrote a great article for the Times Magazine about globalization and how it has flattened the world. [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 5, 2005 11:03:28 AM

» "Flatlined" from gapingvoid
Fred Wilson makes an encouraging point about globalisation:Why should my country matter more than my world? If the world is becoming smarter, more open, more free, and with more opportunity for everyone, I think that's a wonderful thing. My kids... [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 6, 2005 4:07:23 AM

» "Flatlined" from gapingvoid
Fred Wilson makes an encouraging point about globalisation:Why should my country matter more than my world? If the world is becoming smarter, more open, more free, and with more opportunity for everyone, I think that's a wonderful thing. My kids... [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 6, 2005 4:15:51 AM

» "flatlined" from gapingvoid
Fred Wilson makes an encouraging point about globalisation:Why should my country matter more than my world? If the world is becoming smarter, more open, more free, and with more opportunity for everyone, I think that's a wonderful thing. My kids... [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 6, 2005 9:09:15 AM

» The globe flattens from Vy Blog
What a great post from Fred Wilson about US citizens' roles in the world. [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 6, 2005 3:03:54 PM

» The globe flattens from Vy Blog
What a great post from Fred Wilson about US citizens' roles in the world. [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 6, 2005 3:06:10 PM

» Flatlined from Ken Dyck's Weblog
Fred Wilson writes, "I don't believe in walls. I don't believe in protectionism. I don't believe in keeping others down. I believe in letting everyone play. And let the best man or woman win." I couldn't say it better myself. [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 6, 2005 7:42:53 PM

» We live in a flat world from Luca9200's blog
Thomas Friedman wrote a great article for the Times Magazine about globalization and how it has flattened the world. [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 12, 2005 9:44:45 AM

» We live in a flat world from Luca9200's blog
Thomas Friedman wrote a great article for the Times Magazine about globalization and how it has flattened the world. [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 12, 2005 9:46:02 AM

» Who wants a flat world? from brad
This blog reply to a Tom Friedman article is worth reading. Our policy makers preach that individuals, corporations and governments making decisions based on their self-interest produces outcomes that are best for everybody. Unfortunately, thats a mani... [Read More]

Tracked on Apr 13, 2005 4:58:50 AM

Posted April 4, 2005 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

The Transcontinental Railroad

"Looking at it from the first world, we realize we can't change the numerical and cognitive advantage of the third world's exponentiating technical force, even if we wanted to. There just aren't enough U.S. children to staff the rapidly growing technical ranks we are going to create over the next few decades. Even if we could double the present effectiveness of our science and technology education, itself a valuable social goal, we would have little effect on the globalization of technical jobs.

A network property is emerging here.

This argues strongly that the best strategic educational goal for the U.S. and the rest of the first world is to help our children learn to be come effective collaborators, partners, and managers of this burgeoning global technical workforce. The U.S. technical and managerial work force will work smartest by helping all the most eager and globally productive humans to come together rapidly, fluidly and flexibly to develop all manner of technological and social solutions to human problems. In the process, we should expect to increasingly minimize and bypass politics in this new bottom-up driven world we are creating. Managers need a basic science and technological fluency, but most importantly, they must know where to find the world's natural, technical, and human resources, and how to work with them in ethical, non-zero sum creative interactions that are strongly desired by all the participants. As the internet matures, keep your eye out for social software solutions (collaboration-oriented outgrowths of today's multi-player video games) that will allow our rapidly communicating, highly interactive Millenial generation engage in this kind of global entrepreneurship with increasing ease."

http://singularitywatch.com/promontorypoint.html

Posted by: Dimitar Vesselinov | Apr 4, 2005 11:04:28 PM

Hmmm, after reading this article I can't figure out why it made you comment on the fact that you feel uneasy having people know you are an American.

Anyway...

As for the article...well, for anyone who has been involved in any sort of business in the last few years, this article doesn't really say anything new. Maybe my view is biased by the fact that I've been knee-deep in all of this for several years -- most recently from my virtual "office" here in Germany.

Some people will always be resistant to change and, thus, will miss the great opportunities change brings. Some people will suffer and others will benefit from change. Often, the sufferers whine and get all the attention. There's nothing new, here.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the comparative advantages driving all of this diminish. And, they will diminish. We see it every day. While it may still be cheaper to get talent in India and China, someday it won't be. If it comes down to who has the most geniuses, then I guess we'd better get them on our payroll, huh? Either that, or figure out how to make them.

Hey, maybe Microsoft is on to something.

Posted by: Scott | Apr 5, 2005 4:58:12 AM

"Why should my country matter more than my world?" What a fantastic way to summarise it. Great Attitude, AVC.

(If AVC=American, I guess I'm BVC - a British VC)

Posted by: Mark Adams | Apr 5, 2005 5:02:55 AM

One of the most striking things that I've observed was when I was on a grant review panel with people from France, England, and China. We were there to evaluate grants to study mathematical ability (and the subtext was, "why are American kids so behind the rest of the world?"). One of the members, French, kept saying, "I look at these grant budgets -- they are huge! Americans are so rich. Why is math and science education so poor?"

Posted by: Christy | Apr 5, 2005 9:24:19 AM

Amen Fred,

The real scary piece though is that while the people with the walls are in control, WE ARE ALL TOAST.

It was "the majority" that put them there - therefore the majority must want the walls, right?

Posted by: David Gibbons | Apr 5, 2005 9:59:06 AM

Couldn't agree more as it applys to opportunity for technical kids to compete for work, but chaos theory warns against making everything the same and I beleive it.

As long as nationalism doesn't degenerate into pushing and shoving, or worse yet war, it's nice that French people are French, German's are German's, etc... What a boring world we'd live in without such national and cultural diversity.

Posted by: Tony Alva | Apr 5, 2005 10:01:49 AM

I don't think countries are altogether different from companies, and America risks being nothing more than the market leader. There are countless examples of squander by those in the lead - look at the RIAA even. And, unless the U.S. changes the "way it does business", it will be surpassed by a more agile/innovative/open country. Although simplistic, the same was true with the British Empire.

Posted by: Chevsky | Apr 5, 2005 12:33:38 PM

I've blogged this before... as Tony knows, I'm a stauch anti-nationalist. Hitler was a nationalist. Borders suck, but Tony is right about keeping the world interesting - so for now, be proud of who you are, where you are from, and what makes you different...but not better! Fred, been back to MIT lately? I'd be curious to know the ratio between american and foreign students there.

Posted by: jackson | Apr 5, 2005 12:56:02 PM

A little over a quarter (2700/10300) of MIT's grads and undergrads are international students. Fewer than I would have thought, actually, but things have been getting difficult for foreign students since 9/11.

Posted by: Christy | Apr 5, 2005 2:00:06 PM

~40% of the graduate and ~10% of the undergraduate students are from overseas

Posted by: UseGoogle | Apr 5, 2005 2:02:06 PM

The conclusion from this panel,
http://www.sfbayacm.org/events/2005-03-24_Panel.html

also echos the same...

"world is wide open now".

-Uday.

Posted by: Uday Subbarayan | Apr 5, 2005 6:57:48 PM

i share the general enthusiasm for breaking down barriers but let's not get too giddy: some barriers are good, for example, barriers against child labor and slave labor. Just because its becoming a "flat world" doesnt mean everyone is suddenly going to adopt our very progressive Western standards of political and social rights. In fact, we can already see the opposite happening: to compete with slave and child labor, USA and European companies are either pushing down their employees standards of living (by not raising wages, and not increasing benefits, despite inflation) or else moving their production to places where slavery is OK. I ean, we all love Wipro, but in India, its still perefctly legal and acceptable and typical to openly blatantly egregiously discriminate on the basis of race (caste) and gender. Ever heard of a "follower"? In India that's the euphemism given to personal slaves, who "follow" you like a shadow for all your waking hours (and then some) and pick up your garbage when you drop it on the ground and wipe your ass, whatever you like. The current cost of a "follower"? One dollar per day. Those people's world is so flat, its 2-D.

Posted by: steve | Apr 6, 2005 10:54:39 AM

Good points Steve.
I read the Friedman article. When people who talk about outsourcing throw in the idea of radiologists reading films in India, for US patients - it makes me wince. It has been done on a very small scale, a trial of sorts, and is by no means feasible on a larger scale. The radiologists would have to be trained and board certified in the US, and then be willing to return back to India, giving up their grand salary here, to work back home. This may work for some of those who originally hail from India (dont count on it though), but this is by no means a sustainable business model. It's a competitive specialty and most foreign medical graduates, however good they may be, typically do not get radiology positions anymore. The ones who went to school here and trained here are very unlikely to go to India to work for a pittance.
Let's not forget that they would also need to maintain malpractice coverage in the US. We all know how high that cost can run.

The reason I discuss this in further detail than the problems with outsourcing technology, etc is because I'm a physician (not a radiologist), and so its something I have a better grasp of. It only makes me wonder, however, if Friedman really understands the implications of globalization and outsourcing in general, since he is off base on this point in particular.
I do have friends who work in the technology sector, even on the executive levels, and are of Indian origin. They admit that while there are some benefits to outsourcing, for the most part only limited , mundane tasks reap the benefits of outsourcing.
More complex tasks and creative measures are still best done in the US.

The US is NOT just succesful because we have had access to computers and software and the internet for a longer period of time than other nations, who now have access to all this. We are succesful, partly, because our country allows for and supports entrepreneurship in a way no other nation has and, partly, because it's just cultural. This really is a land of immigrants - we are explorers, our forefathers, whatever ethnicity they may be, left their homelands and came here (for freedom, opportunity, what have you). Having inherited their genetics, we have some of those same traits, although perhaps we exhibit them in other ways. Maybe we don't leave our lives behind to explore other opportunities around the world since we don't have to - instead we explore the frontiers of science, technology, media, etc. etc.

Let's not forget, kids in Western Europe have pretty much had access to the same types of technology that we have had the past couple of decades.
I don't recall Napster, Google or any groundbreaking technology having evolved from there.

Posted by: Arun | Apr 6, 2005 8:14:56 PM

power to you, arun.

it amazes me how many well meaning but, i would argue, scarily naive people don't see the horrifying, dark side of what friedman calls "the flat earth":

nature abhors a vacuum, and while it is of course laudable and imperative that we share the riches of the first world with everyone possible, merging the first world and the third world will not result in the third world suddenly and miraculously being pulled up to our standards, but rather will almost certainly result in the third world being pulled up while we are pulled down, until the merged group settles somewhere in the middle, and then, as a merged group, begins the climb back up to higher standards again.

jeez louise, do none of these giddy folks read any history? what i just described is exactly what has happened innumerable times before, as then-first-world civilizations like ancient Egypt and imperial Rome and 19th century Great Britain expanded their spheres of influence.

The difference now is, due to slow and logistically difficult travel and communications, in the old days it was very hard for bad practices to flow back upstream to the motherland (e.g. it wasnt until the very end that the imperial center of Rome fell.) But now, Friedman's "flat earth" allows -- perhaps makes inevitable -- that while rising standards of living and democratic ideals certainly do -- and should -- flow outwards from us, ugly nasty things like codified, sanctified, legalized racial hatreds (the caste system in India; gender slavery in Islamic societies) and brutal oppressive social practices (infanticide in China; female circumcision in Africa) and of course, child and slave labor and a complete disregard for the environment and legal institutions like trial by jury and bankruptcy laws and freedom on religion, flow back. And in our guilt-ridden, politically-correct, multi-culturalism-uber-alles modern society, may even gain some legitimacy (as "valuable local culture"...)

The fall of Rome wasn't followed by the Renaissance, it was followed by the Dark Ages.

Posted by: steve | Apr 7, 2005 9:31:57 AM

Good points Arun. A little overwrought Steve.

Not all work can be offshored. The fair bit that can, I'm more than willing to send offshore.

http://engrm.com/blogometer/2005/04/07/microsoft-india.html

The notion that India is going to put an end to US software development is as far fetched as the factory with the man and the dog. The man feeds the dog, the dog keeps the man from touching the robots. It sounds like the job threat du jour.

Steve. I've not seen living standards drop in my lifetime and huge surge in the labor market means a huge surge in productivity and wealth. Mo' money, Mo' money, Mo' money.

This meme is important to me because I want to operate as an independent, and this spells out the cause of the reorganization, but I'm not of a mind that it moves wealth to India, rather it moves wealth to the individual.

It levels the playing field between the individual and the corporation. We can all take a seat at the network, market our works through the network, bill and collect through the network. The economy will change for the better.

http://engrm.com/blogometer/2005/04/07/breaking-the-law-diminishing-returns.html

As far as importing human rights abuses goes, no I don't think that this sort of thing flows both ways. Wealth and information tips a society toward democracy.

Posted by: Alan Gutierrez | Apr 7, 2005 1:17:53 PM

Friedman was interviewed on both Charlie Rose and The Daily Show this week.

He suggested that one way for America to become more competitive is to have a national project that will drive innovation, education and industry, similar to the way that John Kennedy's lunar goal drove technology in the 60s. Friedman proposes that President Bush challenge America to become energy independent.

I've believed this for a few years now. I disagree with many of the President's actions, but I'd get behind him if he could get beyond the energy = oil thinking that seems prevalent among our political leaders (his token pittance to hydrogen cell research notwithstanding).

I'm no environmental angel - I drive a car that gets 18 mpg - but I'd like more viable energy options, and less concern with prices of foreign products that are required to keep our manufacturing and transportation running.

More importantly, just as the real benefit on the 60's space program was technology advancement rather than a collection of moon rocks, an energy independence commitment could create new technologies and jobs, and could give America a leadership position for other countries needing products and skills for their own energy independence.

Posted by: billa | Apr 7, 2005 2:39:46 PM

You assume everything is equal between your kids and someone else's. Just as your kids enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over mots kids in North Philly, kids in trade-law violating, human rights-oppressive countries like India and China enjoy unfair competitive advantage over your kids. Working harder and getting smarter won't give your kids any better chance when the cheaper, better exploited competition doesn't have to pay for healthcare (see Article 24 of the Human Rights Convention) or enforcement of democratic laws (speaking of democracy, why do people conveniently forget that China is at best a capitalist totalitarian country--why do we do business with institutional thugs, ever?), doesn't enforce laws of democracy, exploits huge numbers of people to serve the few, and overtly manipulates markets to steal--yes steal--business, intellectual property, and quality of life. From your kids. And me. The "Free Market" ain't free at all, Fred, except for the ramoras of the financial world. The most significant beneficiaries of all of this inequity and illegal behavior are multi-national corporations--at our expense--and financial firms.

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