The World Is Flat

While I was Sleeping

Thomas Friedman, the American genius writer, in the first chapter, While I was Sleeping, in his book, the World is Flat, talks about some facts and identifies some terms, concerning globalization and outsourcing.  Friedman divides human history into three different eras: globalization 01, 02, and 03. According to Friedman, Globalization began the moment that Columbus discovered that the world was round. He also goes further and shows how the stages affect life.  The main effect of globalization on society is acceleration and advancement of trade. In the end of the chapter, Friedman travels through Japan, China and back to America, and talks about different types of business outsourcing. He saw many things that show the phenomenon of business outsourcing, such as Pizza Hut, Epson, HP and Texas Instruments during a round of golf in India.

As it is defined in Wikipedia, “open source” software is software that provides the source code. The source code which is copyrighted by the holder is available to all users. Therefore, the users can edit the software. When people hear the term “open source” software, they immediately think of Linus Torvalds, who founded Linux, a UNIX based operating.

Examples of open source software are Perl, PHP, and Python, which are computer programming languages.  Another example is Linux, which is an operating system. Also, Apache, which is server software, and OpenOffice, which is a desktop application, are examples of open source software

Actually, it is not appropriate to whether open source is better than proprietary software because both have benefits. Open source developers get the software and they are not doing that for profit, which is the sole open source’s copyright. However, proprietary software companies‘main intent is to profit. If they don’t work to protect their product, somebody will steal the software and sell it, in  which case they will lose their money they have invested in and their entire job.

Kurzwel wants to show us how significantly shift the world and many issues we have had. He shows why some people make wrong prediction about the future; he says that when people make a prediction about solving a problem, they use the same tools and technology we have today. However, he says we have to consider the changes and the growth in all the part will occur in our prediction.  He gives an example to show what he says; several decades ago, more than 5oo million people were in poverty, but now it is becoming about 200 million. So, technology growth can help us solve many problems like it is mentioned. Also, He talks about how the insisters are becoming smaller and smaller and cheaper at the same time. He believes that nano-engineered designs have a huge significant role in this growth. From his study, he makes some prediction about where technology would be in the next decades