Web Informant #406, 13 April 2005: The Flat Earth Society
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I am sick and tired of hearing about how the Internet has
flattened the world. How instantaneous communications has made it easier for
outsourcing to
Nevertheless, I was fascinated and captivated by Tom
Friedman's latest book, "The World is Flat," which has just been
published. You should pick up a copy:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374292884/davidstromswebin/
Maybe it is because I am already a big fan of Friedman's
columns in the NY Times, although they are now hard to find since they have
been time-shifted. But isn't time shifting all part of the Great
Flattening?Ê Now that we all have TiVos and Web access to nytimes.com, who cares when a
program is broadcast or a piece is actually printed?Ê
Maybe because his book is extraordinarily well-written. It
is chock-a-block with dozens of anecdotes from his travels around the Global
Village. One of my favorites is how UPS is doing repairs on faulty Toshiba
laptops. What does UPS know about repairing laptops? Since people were going to
be sending their laptops back via UPS anyway, why not skip the step and have
UPS run the repair facility, co-locate it next to their flight hub, and save
time in getting the laptops back to the customers?
Reading his book made me start to think of what it means to
live on a flat Earth and where other steps are being skipped in my daily work
life. It isn't just that I now have a staff that spans nine time zones and
works in five different countries and speaks three languages. It isn't just
that everyone has email and Skype and can access the
common workflow applications and calendars. It is that we take it for granted
now that people aren't going to be coming into my physical office at 9 am and
leaving at 5 pm, or that I even know what that means anymore.
My next thoughts were that computing platforms are almost
flat to the point where they are invisible. Does it really matter which platform
you choose? We all run some kind of browser, some kind of IMAP email and RSS
readers, open the same kind of documents and spreadsheets, and use some form of
Instant Messaging. We have our digital music collection on some software that
has ripped all of our CDs into MP3s. The rest is really irrelevant, whether it
is on a Mac or Windows or Lindows or some embedded OS
that we don't even see like on a cell phone. Doesn't really
matter. What are the two most successful uptakes in the platform
business of the past several years? CrackBerry and gaming consoles. You don't hear people debating what
kind of OS is running on their Nintendo, do you? It doesn't matter. They don't
care, just as long as those games are available. We have arrived with the
ultimate Flat Computer.
Here is another example. What should be the main digital
source of entertainment in your car? Should it be a full-fledged audio system,
an iPod with a car connector, an in-seat DVD player,
a real PC or a game console? All of them are valid answers. All of them are
being installed in cars across the planet by talented and not-so-talented
people. All of them make sense, depending on the particular application suite
that you are trying to deliver. And increasingly, all of these solutions will
eventually be offered by the same set of companies and suppliers.
(Just to toot my own automotive horn here for a moment: you
can check out a piece I wrote for Tom's on the subject here:)
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050414/index.html
Another example: LCD TVs. Does it really matter what display
device we have, and what video stream drives it? Nope. (Friedman has another
note about how Wal Mart convinced Sanyo to stay in
the
Look at Microsoft, as another example. They have moved into
the gaming market, and soon their revenues from gaming platforms will be larger
than divisions that produce IT productivity applications. As my boss Omid writes about in his column this week, "Imagine
what would happen if Oracle suddenly got its own reality show on Fox, or SAP
put on a Broadway musical, all to great acclaim."
Now that would be a flattening to be reckoned with.
http://omid.tomshardware.com/2005/04/rides_a_horsema.html
What this means to me is that I need to spend time not on
choosing platforms or which applications matter, but how to show what you need
to accomplish your job and your life with whatever tools you have at hand. That
was an eye-opener for me, and why I like Friedman's book so much.
Friedman spent the past year traveling around the world and
talking to a lot of different people before he got his epiphany about the flat
earth. He spends a lot of time telling you about his insights into the various
tectonic forces that we all have heard before, such as outsourcing, open
sourcing, and in-sourcing. But his approach is fresh, interesting, and
intriguing. His parents used to tell him when he was a boy (as did my own)
"Finish your dinner. Children are starving in
David Strom
Editor-in-Chief
Tom's Guides Publishing
+1 (818) 991-0282 x204
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