I’ve been reading Thomas Friedman’s book “The World Is Flat” and have been finding it a compelling and interesting read. I think he has really clearly identified and explained the trends and convergences that have brought us to what is arguably one of the most important inflexion points in world history.
If you get a chance to read the book I suggest you do so. In the meantime, you might like to have a look at this video (http://mitworld.mit.edu/play/264/) of Friedman giving a speech to a group of students and staff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this talk he gives an excellent overview of the book and explains some of its key ideas. The speech lasts about 75 minutes in total and its the sort of thing you need to really sit and watch in its entirety, but well worth it. Maybe watch it instead of TV one night…
Understanding Flatness by Chris Betcher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
You might be interested in the Flat Classroom project that my students in Camilla, GA and Julie LIndsey’s students in Dhaka Bangladesh created – it just won the 2006 edublog award for best Wiki. They do a great job of discussing the trends and the videos – particularly good are the Virtual communications and Mobile and Ubiquitous computing pages. Great blog!