Why is the world flat?

People heard about this after Thomas L. Friedman released The World Is Flat and the Vietnamese translation published by Young Publisher in 2006. It is not surprising that this book was selected by Financial Times and Golman Sachs Business as the Best Book in 2005. The author of this book is US. News & Report voted one of America's best leaders. He has also received Pulitzer Press awards many times.

The author was very logical when choosing ten factors that have a decisive role in flattening the world.

The first is the fact that the Berlin wall was demolished on November 2, 1989, the opening step for everyone to think of the world as a common community, a common market and a common ecology. . This is also an opportunity to lead to the emergence of the European Union and the euro. Only 6 months later, Windows 3.0 version was released, eliminating all information clogging, making people see the world as a single community and with unified potential.

The second factor is the introduction of the global network www (World Wide Web) with the first website address put into operation by Berners - Lee from 6.8.1991. Next was Netscape's offering of a large commercial browser, which made it easy for the baby to the old man to use the Internet. Just 15 days after Netscape sold its stock to the public for the first time, the Windows 95 operating system was delivered to customers with the Internet support built-in feature. The value of the ability to digitize information makes people want to digitize everything, and all documents, images, music, movies . are converted into bit and byte units. People take photos with digital cameras, shoot movies with compact cameras, record small cameras like a pen, send letters by email, and maybe only movies and stamps will have very few people left. set to use .

The third factor is the breakthrough in handling work by combining personal computers and email (email). The sales department can receive orders via email, send information to the computer system, send an email to the delivery department, and deliver the goods to the recipient and automatically issue the computerized invoice at the time there. Paper, ink, typewriters, three-wire pairs, storage bookshelves . will probably no longer mean anything and corruption does not have the land to roll, self-work easily! With SMPT protocol, it is possible to exchange messages between different computer systems. Mail does not need a courier, but is delivered anywhere in the world in a moment and at a surprisingly cheap price. HTML is a language that allows anyone to design and publish data for transmission anywhere and any computer can access it. Doctors can help each other read the X. Quang movie and give advice about a patient who is halfway around the world. E-commerce (e-commerce) has become popular with every family .

The fourth factor is that community-based software development has become a potential business. Individuals can not only use information but also produce information on electronic tools (currently 24 million blogs and about 7,000 new blogs every day). Anyone can join the editorial encyclopedia to open Wikipedia (for Vietnam is http://en.wikipedia.org). CollabNet is a provider of tools and infrastructure for people around the world to collaborate on secure web sites (new passwords can be joined). On July 7, 2005, a subway bombing in London occurred, as suggested by the BBC website, after 24 hours, there were 2 thousand articles, 1,000 photos, and 20 video clips sent by the masses. to contribute to the investigation. In our country today you may not need to buy newspapers but still read a dozen types of newspapers, but just like the actual printed pages, not just the news as on the websites on the net. However, the network with open source is also face false information or lack of goodwill.

The fifth factor is the ability of developing countries to take advantage of low-skilled and low-cost, time-consuming workforce to carry out some of the necessary steps and then attach themselves to their production lines. . India is a poor country, instead of exploiting natural resources, they have exploited the wisdom of the people, trained many excellent experts in the fields of science, technology and medicine. Taking a technology academy in India is more difficult than taking a Harvard or Masanchussetts (!) Exam. Y2K is an event up to 1.1.2000 many old computers will record as 1.1.00 and assume that it was 1900 (!). The US has joined hands with India to mobilize a huge number of participating experts to solve this problem (check all computers in the world!). The Indian IT industry left a mark on the globe after the Y2K incident. The journalist Louis Pasteur once said: ' Good luck smiling at people who are always ready '.

The sixth factor is the process of moving production facilities to countries with a large and cheap labor force and a large consumer market. In 2001, after joining the WTO, China ensured that if foreign companies transferred factories to the country, they would be protected by international law and standard business practices. A book on WTO rules is translated into Chinese and after a few weeks sold 2 million copies (!). China can provide a huge number of workers and has a huge market for products. There are 400/500 leading US companies investing more than 2,000 projects in China. Recently many countries have diverted more investment into our country. If calculating the amount of foreign investment per capita, perhaps Vietnam is already higher than China (!).

The seventh factor is to create a global supply chain store that gives customers the best products, but with the lowest value. For example, when you buy any item at Wal - Mart supermarket and put it on the table to buy, immediately, somewhere in the world produces this item, people start to produce more. exactly the same item. It may be a very remote country but there is always a flow to every sales branch. On the Christmas holiday at 4,000 by Wal - Mart, 40,000 computers were sold (!). Wal-Mart alone sold 2,300 million pieces of goods annually on a global scale. It is called a supply chain, a horizontal collaboration method between suppliers, retailers and customers.

The eighth factor is world synchronization thanks to external subscribers. Say an example for easy understanding: The UPS company first only does the delivery of goods. They have 270 aircraft, 88,000 motor vehicles of all kinds and annual sales of up to 35 billion USD. But they have upgraded their activities to become a dynamic supply chain manager. For example, you buy a Toshiba laptop, but it is broken during the warranty period. You request that UPS move to Toshiba to correct and repair Toshiba and ask UPS to forward it to you. How long time will be and how much it will cost Toshiba. Today Toshiba trains UPS to have a repair shop on the spot and you can get your computer back from Toshiba Company just two days later.

The ninth factor is to be able to find any answer by searching on websites that carry the function of giant search and search tools such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, TiVo . It is a new trend of Internet - the trend of self-service!

The tenth factor is the advancement of wireless means of conveying information. For example, a smaller hand-held iPaq digital music player can connect wirelessly to the Internet and other devices by external beam (1m distance), by Bluetooth (9,14m distance), by Wi-fi (45 ways) , 72m). Mobile phones are wireless devices that can be contacted anywhere in the world. With USB 2.0 drives and Pentium processors, today to download a photo from a digital camera takes less than 0.5 seconds (!). With a tiny 40GB iPod music player today you can store several thousand of your favorite songs. With a laptop, personal computer or PDA and a microphone attached, you can make phone calls around the world at insignificant prices or completely free if you use the Internet gateway called VoIP. With video calling technology, we can organize international conferences without the cost of airline tickets and accommodation costs. The parties sit in front of a long table opposite a wall with a flat-screen TV. Spoiled arguing and feeling each other's breath (!) .

I cannot afford Thomas L. Friedman's famous ' Flat World ' book because it is 818 pages thick and very rich. I just want to convey briefly why the world is now becoming a flat world. We have just joined the WTO, which is directly involved in the global market with numerous opportunities and many challenges. It is important to understand that we live in a flat world to take advantage of its preeminent aspects and also to prevent negative effects that are the flip side of the flat world.

Prof. Nguyen Lan Dung