Module 6

Free trade is basically unrestricted capitalism, especially between countries.  Free trade encourages the fundemental aspects of capitalism by promoting a survival of the fittest mentality and the market for prices on goods and services is dependant only upon supply and demand.  In contrast to free trade are restrictions which governments impose on the trade system.  Examples include protective tarrifs and taxes on imports, and so-called "free trade agreements" which basically force a certain commodity to be a certain price amongst all the member nations.

An example of a nation who exercises such protectionism is Japan.  Japan has very high import tarrifs on goods and products of protected industries.  Electronics and automobiles are the best examples of this.  When I was in Japan I almost never saw a car from a non-Japanese auto company.  When I did it was like a status symbol.  You never saw a Ford Escort, but occasionally I saw a Jeep Wrangler or other showpiece vehicle who's purpose there was "cool points" rather than functionality, reliability, or any other valuable attribute.  There were millions of Toyotas, Hondas, and Mitsubishis there however.  The only non-Japanese electronics I ever saw there were iPhones.  Apple managed to work a deal with one of the major telecom companies there (NCC DoCoMo I think it was) to provide iPhones as an offering to customers signing a cell phone contract with the carrier.

Getting back on track, I think that free trade is a good thing in general because it drives prices down and product quality up, but free trade is a bad thing for the U.S.  My opinion of my fellow Americans is actually pretty low.  The more I learn about the world outside the States, the more clear it becomes that most of the people in this nation are ignorant and lazy.  Those of you reading this are of the minority that are making an effort to better yourselves, and while attending the uni it's easy to think that all of America does the same, but most the truth is Americans are slobs.

They and their children are type of people will not be able to compete with the driven and well educated Indians and Chinese.  More and more jobs will go there because the U.S. education system is nothing more than tax-funded day care, and Americans have a welfare mentality where they think everything should just be handed to them without having to work simply because they are American citizens.

The "new middler" as Friedman describes it is someone who is successfully employed as middle class in the new flat world.  As more and more middle class service jobs are being outsourced, people in developed countries who have traditionally been employed in fields such as accounting, tax form preparation, tech support will have to retrain to other jobs which have come about as a result of this world flattening.  What is not as offshoreable are the jobs where managerial skills within a global 24/7/365 supply chain, collaboration skills that help realize new ideas into new products, and sales, marketing, and leadership skills to make a profit from those ideas and creations.

According to the book in the new flat world those who have a high 'curiosity quotient' and high 'passion quotient' are more valuable than those with a high intelligence quotient.  I tend to agree with this because in our fast paced world, those who can learn quickly due to high curiosity and passion do better in business than those who, though smart, have no drive or desire to adapt, learn, or innovate.

Module 5

The 'Triple Convergence' Friedman describes in his book is the convergence of three convergences.  The first is the ten 'flatteners' which he had talked about in the first part of his book: the fall of the Berlin Wall, rise in PC usage, Netscape and the Internet, work flow software, 'in-forming,' offshoring and outsourcing, uploading, insourcing, supply chain advances, and 'steroids.'  The second of the convergences is in my opinion simply an offshoot of the first.

This second convergence is the evolution of business practices to take advantage of the new technologies and platforms described in the ten 'flatteners' of the first chapter.  Berlin Wall plus Netscape equals large pool of cheap skilled labor in India and China to outsource and offshore to.  Rise in PC ownership to ubiquitous levels plus 'in-forming' via Google and other at-your-fingertips information sources equals more informed consumers who demand more and better for less and can get it from anyone who has a PalPal account.

These mashups of 'flatteners' result in a change from vertical hierarchy, to horizontal collaboration.  This is particularly true in the interactions between a corporation and its suppliers, and a corporation and its customers.  Gone are the days where companies lock into contracts with select few suppliers and customers had die-hard brand loyalty.  Now companies will instead put out a bid to suppliers who can provide the part for the least cost, and then a consumer will gather information on competing products in order to balance consumer reports and non-partisan reviews with the item's cost.

The terms 'exploiter' and 'exploited' imply that someone was taken advantage of to the exclusive benefit of the other party.  In this case both the state of Indiana and the Indian company Tata formed a mutually beneficial relationship.  The state saved a large amount of money, and the company gained a large contract for work.  The problem was politics.  Politicians will take anything at hand they feel can be used to manipulate the ignorant masses and turn it into a campaign issue, regardless of whether or not it even IS an issue.  So apparently the Republicans got wind of the contract, made a huge stink about it which put pressure on the Democrat Governor to do something to make it look like he was pro-local Indiana.  He ordered the contract canceled, and the work subdivided so local companies could bid on the pieces.

My own personal experience tells me that the final product after doing this almost certainly had numerous flaws, bugs, issues, etc.  Since you have multiple different organizations each with their own idea on how to proceed with the work, when it comes time to put them all together it's like a patchwork quilt, but not nearly as useful as the blanket would be.  In addition you have the added bonus of spending more money and time than you would have on the cohesive (and probably superior) product that the Indian company provides.  In the end I would have to say that the exploiters were the politicians, and the exploited were the easily duped citizens.

There's so much wrong with intellectual property law in the world books could be written on it.  The original idea behind patents, copyrights, and other IP laws was to encourage the development of new ideas by protecting the rights of people who invent new devices or systems.  By giving them exclusive ownership of the things they create, it both motivates people to develop and invent and it allows funds generated from previous ventures to be invested in future innovations, thus resulting in advancement of society and humanity.  Sounds wonderful right?  The problem is that with the digitization of everything over the last two decades or so is that anything that can be turned in to 1s and 0s it has been.  This has made it exponentially easier to basically steal someone else's work by simply making a copy.

Module 4

This assignment was actually pretty easy for since I work in the IT field as an engineering intern at Trusted Network Solutions, an IT value added retailer (VAR).  The reason for a VAR's existence is to provide solutions to companies whose IT staff is unable to fulfill a need they have.  I'll give several examples.

Let's say a small company called LittleCo wants to upgrade their Microsoft Exchange server from 2007 to 2010, but being a small company their IT staff, being two people, do not have the expertise to perform this upgrade.  While LittleCo's IT crew is competent they are busy running the day to day operations of their company, and do not have the time to train up on Exchange migrations.  TNS has engineers who have performed the upgrade several times so we not only know how to do it quickly, but also what pitfalls to avoid.  LittleCo purchases an Exchange 2010 license and engineering hours from us, and if necessary, a new server to act as the email server if their current one is not up to specs.

As another example, a large corporation called HugeCorp wants to add a SAN (storage area network, which is basically a server with a massive amount of storage for data accessible over the network) to their network in preparation for expansion of the business.  While their larger IT staff and higher budget means they could spare the people and the funds for training on the process of installing the SAN, they want it done quickly and they don't want to mess with the complexities determining the best SAN to use and deal with ordering the system from the manufacturer.

TNS handles all the footwork by gathering the requirements from HugeCorp, reviewing the offerings from our partners who manufacture SANs, putting together a build with everything needed for it to function (not just the server and the licenses, but everything down to the power cables).  We submit a proposal to HugeCorp with the product and engineering hours as a scope of work, and if there are any changes required by HugeCorp we can make adjustments before finalizing the work contract.  Our engineers receive the SAN, make sure it's not DoA, get it patched and updated, and then work with their IT staff to set it up on their network and assure that it's functioning properly.  Should any issues arise they can call us and we can help troubleshoot it.  Those are just a couple examples of the type of work we do, but it should give an idea of what a VAR like TNS does.

I interviewed my boss about his work as both an IT consultant and an engineer:

• Describe a day in your life at work.

Right now, I wake up and work remotely on either entering time to service tickets or replying to email, or both.  Then I leave for the office or to go to a customer appointment.  I also usually try to plan my day before I leave home; however, plans usually change once the day gets moving along.  I usually have 2-3 customer appointments per day, helping with either new installations or doing break/fix work on problems occurring in the network.  Throughout the day I am checking email and making sure there are no emergencies that need to be taken care of.  If there is, adjustments need to be made to the remaining appointments.  At the end of the, I try to catch up on email and paperwork.

•  With the rapid pace of technological change, how do you keep up?

This is tough to do.  There are 3 ways this is accomplished.  First is working with products and learning about new features.  This provides a way to get practical experience with different technologies.  Second is participating in training, either formal or manufacturer specific.  Last is reading and learning about what is coming in the future.

•     What are your predictions of the industry 5 years from now?  20 years from now?

From a consulting perspective, there is a big move towards cloud offering and managed services.  I see this space becoming larger as time goes on.  I still see a need for on premise hardware and software installation and support.  I don’t see the consulting field dying.  Twenty years from now, who knows?  Mass use of the Internet is just about 20 years old.  With the rapid change of technology, this is now unpredictable.

•     What's the best part of the job?

The best part of being a consultant is working with customers to fix the problems they have in their networks.  Getting to know customers and their networks is great, and helping them grow their network is fun.

•     What's the worst part of the job?

Plans changing.  It is so hard to predict what a day will look like.  It can be stressful when someone call saying they have a huge network problem and want help now when there are preset appointments with other customers.  Juggling the schedule is hard and can very demanding at times.

The complexity combined with the rapid change of the IT and computer fields makes working in them very challenging.  Unlike many other occupations, you must constantly adapt and learn new skills if you are to survive in the industry.  You can’t just learn and practice to mastery the tools and techniques and then be set for 20 years of employment.  There’s not only the risk of becoming obsolete due to change in your area of focus, but also your area of focus itself could become obsolete because of disruptive technologies or outsourcing and automation.

Module 3

Offshoring and outsourcing are two similar concepts in modern business.  Outsourcing is the subcontracting of part of a business process to another company who returns the result to you.  Usually this is done to reduce in-house costs of training, labor etc. so that the business can focus more on its core products.  Offshoring is where a company moves part of its business to another country to take advantage of lower wages, weaker environmental restrictions, lower taxes, reduced healthcare costs, etc.

The two concepts are not mutually exclusive however.  A great example of this is where a company in the U.S. would both outsource and offshore part of its business, such as a customer support call center, to another country like India.  This allows the U.S. company to save even more than if they outsourced to another U.S. company and with today's telecommunication infrastructure this is more than feasible.  Offshoring, while it usually does reduce costs, it also extends a company's supply lines with results in reduced reaction time.  This can be trivial or critical depending on the industry the business is in.

The supply chain is the system by which goods get to the consumers.  From innovation to design to manufacture to shipment to sale, the whole process is the supply chain.  It involves suppliers who manufacture goods in bulk for purchase by retailers, the shipping companies who move those goods, and the retailer itself who sells to the end consumer.  Wal-Mart is the king of supply chain management.  Their one-two combo of distribution centers tied to a distributer-accessible IT infrastructure allowed for the super efficient command and control of the whole supply and disbursement system.  Since the manufacturer knew how many of item X were being sold, they knew how many they needed to produce to resupply the retail stores.

This Just-In-Time system that I'm assuming Wal-Mart adopted from Toyota's production system is the principal reason they were able to grow from a single store to the global powerhouse they are today.  The JIT system is where the components needed in order to manufacture something like a car are delivered just as they are needed for assembly which reduces the need for on hand inventory.  Auto makers in Japan sell cars the way HP and Dell sell laptops: they let the customer pick and choose the features they want on their model, and build it to suit for that specific customer.

I'm not sure if Google was the first to do so, but they definitely brought targeted advertising into to forefront of marketing.  By targeting ads based on the contents of a user's searches or emails Google generates more hits than blind advertising would.  Also by making most of the world's public knowledge easily searchable, Google allows consumers to find a multitude of products, see reviews on them, and locate sellers faster than driving to a local retail outlet who would have a lower selection, no way to determine the quality, and higher price if you did buy.

Google, eBay, and Amazon have made brick and mortar stores for many products, especially electronics and other small volume high value goods, obsolete.  I haven't purchased a video game, computer part, movie, anime, or music from a physical store in over five years.  It's just cheaper/easier/faster to do it online and Google facilitates that by putting all the information I need at my fingertips.  Why drive when I can click?

Module 2

An essay which doesn't have to be like a book report, hurray!

Workflow software is, in a nutshell, any software which improves the productivity and/or efficiency of an individual or company's work process, usually by automating some or all of the process.  When I think of 'work flow software' three things come to my mind: cloud, cloud, and cloud.  Hosted solutions for companies such as Amazon's massive datacenters and for individuals such as Dropbox and CrashPlan+ are cloud-based.  And although it doesn't automate anything, I think that cloud-based Google Docs qualifies as workflow software.  Remote, concurrent, collaborative data manipulation definitely facilitates the flow of work.  Most "get things done" software like this can fall into this category.  Another that just came to mind is Remember the Milk which is like a super to-do list on steroids that I use to keep track of the many things I have to do daily.  I'm not sure that strictly speaking it is work flow software but it makes things easier to get done by keeping track of them for me.

Open source software just blows my mind.  What you have basically is a huge number of skilled programmers who write programs and let people download and use them for FREE.  Additionally since the source code is available, any other programmer with the skill to do so can modify it to his or her own specific needs or improve it by adding features, functionality, or patching bugs and security vulnerabilities.  Also for FREE.  Open source has provided the world with the GNU Privacy Guard cryptosystem, the Linux operating system, Apache web server, and innumerable other applications for use by anyone who cares to search for and download them.  For FREE.

Thus far I've used the word 'free' which means "doesn't cost you anything," but open source is tied to the other meaning of free which is "free to do with as you please" and is the what the GNU project is all about.  I'm not a programmer but I agree with most of the free software movement's ideals.  The reason is that most of the basic ideas of software freedom correlate to those of political and civil freedom.

Outsourcing is subcontracting.  My personal opinion of it is pretty negative because I've worked many call center jobs and those are always subcontracted/outsourced.  When a company outsources part of their workload, they can reduce costs by not having to train or hire personnel to do that part of the work, and often times the outsourced work is sent to India or China or some other country where wages for trained professionals is just a fraction of the minimum wage in the U.S.  The issue I have is that when a company outsources they do it purely to save money, and not to provide better service to their customers or support for their product.  In the pursuit of slashing costs outsourcing companies like ACS and Convergys have to put in the lowest bid so to accomplish this little things like training and tools that work for the poor people who are going to be on the phones fall to the wayside.

Outsourcing isn't inherently bad.  It's just the execution of it that is.  For example since my expertise is in computers, when I my car needs maintenance or has something wrong with it I'm not going to try and fix it myself even though I probably could learn how.  No, it's much more effective to pay someone who already knows how to do it for their time and skill.  However when a company like HP outsources to India or Convergys and someone who knows as much about their computer as I know about my car calls for support and cannot understand the person on the other end, or the person on the other end can't help them because they have no tools to do so, the customer becomes justifiably angry.  When I worked those types of jobs I often wondered if the company ever did a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the money saved by outsourcing was greater than the revenue lost from irate consumers.  I always assumed that they didn't do the analysis because that too would cost money.

Module 1

In the first section of his book, Friedman analyzes ten 'flatteners' which are events, technologies, and systems which have dramatically shrunk the world within the contexts of communication and human interaction.  These 'flatteners' have also, according to the author, flattened hierarchies and established a new world order where rather than countries and corporations, it is individuals who are the driving force in the world today.

He initially explains this through his concept of 'Globalization X.0' where 'Globalization 1.0' occured from 1492 to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  That period of time saw countries driven by (religious) Imperialism shape the world on a global scale for the sake of the country.  'Globalization 2.0' was from the Industrial Revolution until the inception of the Internet.  During that time period it was companies rather than countries which drove change and innovation and who competed against one another for power and wealth.  'Globalization 3.0' is the era we are in now where the explosive expansion of the Internet and the PC has allowed almost anyone from almost anywhere to design, create, collaborate, innovate, and sell as individuals rather than being forced to join a company or government to do so.  The author's concept of 'Globalization X.0' is how he describes the 'flatteners' he discusses afterwards.

The first 'flattener' is the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Rather than simply the fall of the Berlin Wall but the whole cultural shift worldwide as a result of (or at least as a follow-on to) its fall towards open discourse, freedom of expression, and the breaking of barriers is Friedman's first 'flattener.'  Restrictions and controls stifle innovation, creativity, and progress and the fall of communism left capitalism as the only viable system available.  Since capitalism promotes amongst other things expansion, interaction, communication, and merit, a shift to capitalism worldwide broke down borders and regulations which inhibited these.

The second 'flattener' he describes is Netscape.  The browser did two very important things.  First it caused the explosive growth of Internet usage.  It made it easy for anyone with a computer and a connection to the Internet to view the content that people were making available.  With more people using it, more content was created, and the more content created, the more people wanted to access the Internet.

The second, and in my opinion more important thing it did was to promote the use of standard protocols for use on the Internet.  Protocols such as TCP/IP, FTP, SSL, SMTP, HTTP, and HTML which allow any machine using these open standards to communicate with each other was the true source of the Internet's success.  With an open set of standards, even if someone was working on a proprietary system, he or she could communicate with others across the Internet so long as they adopted those standards.  Netscapes market share also prevented Microsoft from gaining a monopoly on the browser which would have ment they could have dictated the protocols of the Internet to be Microsoft proprietary ones.  That would have crushed any open standards and would require anyone wishing to use Microsoft's protocols to pay Microsoft for that right.

All in all I've found the reading to mostly be boring thus far as I already knew the concept that Friedman describes as 'Globalization X.0' from my history classes and Wikipedia, and I don't think that the fall of the Berlin Wall had quite the effect the author describes.  It no doubt changed the political climate greatly, but by this point companies were the global power and it was only a natural course for former communist countries to join the global market afterwards as their companies were no longer prevented from doing so.  I also knew about the ironic case where Microsoft brought them to court because Netscape was monopolistic.  I did find the story about Netscape interesting because I didn't know how much it had aided the adoption of open standard protocols for the Internet.