IS IT A FLAT WORLD?

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IS IT A FLAT WORLD?

Thomas Friedman popularised his idea of the flat world in his best seller The World is Flat published in 2005 and was instantaneously lapped as the watershed in human history, where in common man’s understanding the resources for change would be equally available to every individual on the face of this earth. Fourteen years have passed since then and there are very few instances to this happening at mass scale. Are the resources available over the net for free or technology applications sufficient enough to bring this change and feel.

The ‘flattening’ of the world does not seem to have happened and power centres, economic and political remain where they are and the rest of the world manages with WhatsApp. This being a force for good – for business, the environment and people was not witnessed. Some incremental have happened, might he it would have happened otherwise too. The world was never been flat, is not flat and will never be flat. Strength and power have been the primordial behavioural traits of humankind, only the tool has kept of changing.

Whether it was romanticism of a journalist or a soft sell of the western idea of knowledge liberalism or being ignorant of the business and technical machinations of powerful countries and companies, the flat world is just a mirage we can aspire of. In the supposedly same flat world, the data is pulled to the servers of one country for commercial and power play exploitation of the worst type. Even the licensing of the world’s most common softwares has not seen any radical change. IT business surges ahead in a non-flat world.

A flat world hypothesis is a feel good factor, makes markets more amenable. Every IT product is most prized commodity, the source code and real operations not known to anyone. These are the dark alleys or iron curtains of the flat world. If there was anything left to doubt, the wrangling for the last few months over Huawei’s 5G and it making waves at G20 summit can put those doubts completely to rest.

TECHNOLOGY WILL NEVER HAVE A FREE RUN TO CREATE A FLAT WORLD.

Sanjay Sahay

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