Is the world really flat?

Steven Lyle Jordan · 07-26-2008, 11:13 PM

I was just introduced to the book "The World is Flat: A brief history of the globalized world in the 21st century" by Thomas Friedman. Without getting into the details of the book, I immediately had to ponder: Has the internet really made the world flat?

I don't think so. I see the internet as having created multiple parallel levels of communication, from very basic to incredibly complex, many of them interconnected and interrelated... as well as a "sub-level" of communication, collecting and acting upon data at a usually-hidden level. To me, this makes the internet not flat, but a three-dimensional collection of levels and sub-levels, operating concurrently and/or independently to each other.

What say ye, Mobilereaders?

RWood · 07-26-2008, 11:38 PM

I had close to the same reaction when I read the book (it seems like a lifetime or two ago.) While there is a greater connection and communication systems are changing, the world is far from flat.

</professor mode on>

We have had several shifts before in the Dominant Media. Each replaced the prior dominant media as the main communication system for the masses. Each new media took elements from the prior and presented it in a new light and provided new tools for manipulating both it and the masses.

The first major advance was the development of language itself. From there it was writing, the codex, printing, radio, television, and now the Internet.

If you will let me get by with "Proof is left to the student" I will be quiet and go back to reading. If you want more detail, you are warned that I taught this stuff for a few years.

</professor mode off>

desertgrandma · 07-27-2008, 01:35 AM

[QUOTE=RWood;222579]I had close to the same reaction when I read the book (it seems like a lifetime or two ago.) While there is a greater connection and communication systems are changing, the world is far from flat.

</professor mode on>

We have had several shifts before in the Dominant Media. Each replaced the prior dominant media as the main communication system for the masses. Each new media took elements from the prior and presented it in a new light and provided new tools for manipulating both it and the masses.

The first major advance was the development of language itself. From there it was writing, the codex, printing, radio, television, and now the Internet.

If you will let me get by with "Proof is left to the student" I will be quiet and go back to reading. If you want more detail, you are warned that I taught this stuff for a few years.

</professor mode off>[/QUOTE

I'm listening..........

hidari · 07-27-2008, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I was just introduced to the book "The World is Flat: A brief history of the globalized world in the 21st century" by Thomas Friedman. Without getting into the details of the book, I immediately had to ponder: Has the internet really made the world flat?

I don't think so. I see the internet as having created multiple parallel levels of communication, from very basic to incredibly complex, many of them interconnected and interrelated... as well as a "sub-level" of communication, collecting and acting upon data at a usually-hidden level. To me, this makes the internet not flat, but a three-dimensional collection of levels and sub-levels, operating concurrently and/or independently to each other.

What say ye, Mobilereaders?

Freidnman wrote a good book called frrom Beirut to Jerusalem.... I will refrain from criticizing the "Flat" book. Suffice to say,, as you know Steve, The Demand on Oil will trump any "Globalization" in the 21st century.I'm sure Mr. Friedman and his billionaire wife will ride out the next 20 years without too many hitches...

hidari

GeoffC · 07-27-2008, 04:27 AM

[QUOTE=desertgrandma;222612]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RWood

</professor mode on>

If you will let me get by with "Proof is left to the student" I will be quiet and go back to reading. If you want more detail, you are warned that I taught this stuff for a few years.

</professor mode off>

grasshopper fodder here, oh enlightened one...

enlighten those who truely believe...

Geoff
(nuthouse driven)...

basschick · 07-27-2008, 06:15 AM

i guess whether the things he listed make the world flat depend soley on point of view. i work on the internet, and i suspect my view is askew (hey, take THAT, kevin smith!).

i work with people from the philippines, the uk, india,slavakia, france, germany, canada and many other places in realtime on icq. some of the time i don't even know where people i work with are, and unlike some people i know, i often don't ask. i get paid in realtime over half the time, and almost all the people i pay i pay in realtime. recently someone asked me if a writer i sometime use and also supervise for 2 clients was a man or a woman, and i have no idea.

it's definitely a different world than it was 15 years ago. but is it flat? not to me - it's exciting and very multi-dimensional.

RWood · 07-27-2008, 05:56 PM

Finishing a brief for a client presentation tomorrow. I wish I had more advance notice than yesterday; but, it is better than tomorrow morning. More when I return.

Quote:

From basschick:
it's definitely a different world than it was 15 years ago. but is it flat? not to me - it's exciting and very multi-dimensional.

Very true. The changes that are being felt throughout the world are not unique or first felt to this change.

RickyMaveety · 07-27-2008, 06:14 PM

I don't see the Internet as having made the world "flat" .... to me, it's made the six degrees of separation much more easily discovered.

I mean, for example, how else could an average person like myself broadcast to hundreds or thousands of people the name of the town in which I live, and almost instantly find myself talking to the cousin of one of those people who just happens to live in the town next to me.

And, the friend the cousin was with at the party just happens to be really good friends with the lady who designed and built my house.

I think what the Internet has done is allow people to find those unknown connections much (much) more quickly, and it allows people to cut across lines of class, culture, race, religion ... you name it ... in order to find them.

RWood · 07-29-2008, 12:03 AM

Today’s topic is the Dominant Media Theory. First, a few announcements. New university rules this term prohibit smoking in lecture halls during class and no food, shall I say pizza, deliveries while class is in session. Moving on ….

Enrichment reading recommendations are The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley and The Silent Language by Ed Hall. Great books. Not required, just great related reading.

For our purposes media is the way one or more people communicate with others. Here within the Department of Communications we study both the content (sometimes called the message) but also the medium. Scholars differ as to which is more important and which one drives the other. At this point, we will look at it from the vantage of the medium first and the implications these changes have had on the messages transmitted and the society as a whole because of these changes in the medium.

Our earliest ancestors had no language, as we know it today. They did communicate. In addition to physical contact, they had grunts, growls, yelps, and other sounds. Perhaps not the widest range of sounds, but it got a point across a bit. Scientists tell us that the brain devises concepts before it can figure out how to express them. Likewise, our early ancestors developed a verbal language to assist them in hunting because it often took more than one person to capture larger animals. Language was also useful in selecting the right fruits and vegetables. In these early days, they found that the group – call it tribe or clan or political party – can do more than a single person can. We have been doomed to civilization ever since then.

Now before you go thinking that these are primitive societies, quite complex social structures were built with an oral language alone. Consider the Homer epics that we all studied in high school were passed down for generations from one person to another without ever being written until Homer got all the credit. What was limited was how large a group could be before variations crept into the language. This group over hear (point right) started a language that they taught to (point back right) another group which in turn taught it to (point to the whole left side) two other groups. Since these groups did not interact completely every day things changed. Consider the variations in speech just within the people in this room from Atlanta drawl to Bay State clipped and no one understands those from Long Island.

One measure that many people use to measure languages is the complexity of their temporal relationships. Think back to your English class and the verb tenses you learned: Past, Present, Future, Future Perfect, &c. English has very few compared to French. Other languages have only a “now.” Some have no words for the future. Language adapts to the needs of the people using it.

As most of you have already figured out when things exist in an oral form only they shift over time. Great for rumors, bad for laws. This leads to the next stage medium, writing.

Writing developed to allow one generation to pass on what it knew to another later generation. It also allowed something to exist today and tomorrow, small things like laws. Early writing was picture based such as the cave paintings that were not too far removed from the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Early Babylonian clay tablets were a bit more portable but tended to stay in the same place until they broke. All written languages evolved over time to meet the demands of the society that created them with the exception of Korean that was devised completely by one of their Kings.

Writing along with its spelling and punctuation change over time. Some are technology based others are a reflection of changes in the language itself. These will show up as we move forward with medium evolution.

As we see, language allows a society to grow only so large before it fractures. A form of writing allows a larger society; but the general-king must be at the head of the army or at the very least, the eldest-son-the-king-to-be must head the army.

Two developments shape the next stage, an easy to transport medium for writing and a way to put multiples of this together to form something more. Today we call the first one “paper” and the second is called the “codex.” Now the king can stay in their capitol or castle and dispatch orders to the troops as well as receive reports from them. Laws can easily be copied and propagated to every settlement within the realm. Uniform administration. Histories no longer depend on memory. Tax rolls and beer recipes can be written for future reference. Bibles were written and copied over and over.

Have you noticed what’s happening as we come forward in time?

At each change of Dominant Media, more and more people are involved in creating the content and that content is spread to an ever-widening audience. This is the key to Dominant Media. From here on it just gets faster, more people are involved at every stage, and the distribution gets wider and wider. A side benefit is that education levels rise, as more people are required at all levels.

At some unknown date in China and later in 15th century Europe, the printing press was devised. Now the time consuming, error prone copying of manuscripts and Bibles can be created in one place and widely distributed. Like every change in the Dominant Media, this it enforces additional standardization in the mediums that went before it as it incorporates them into the new Dominant Media. A classic example of this is the variations in Latin glyphs (that’s a fancy term for letterforms, how you know an “A” is an “A”.)

A side note for those who favor the content analysis path is that about this time the Spanish captured several Moor libraries and discovered the works of many Arab, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman writers. The western world was introduced to Plato, Aristotle, Algebra, and many other works and concepts that helped form the basis of the civilization we are in now. These previously cloistered works were now distributed throughout the western world thanks to the printing press.

End of Part 1

GeoffC · 07-29-2008, 04:26 AM

Quote "Now the time consuming, error prone copying of manuscripts and Bibles can be created in one place and widely distributed."....

And the perfect reason why the Bible and others are likely not the word of God as suggested by some religious fanatics...in defence of their fanaticism...

Oh professor, what time do we return for part 2?
Do we need to pay Pshrynk at the door at the end of each lecture - or will you accept a cheque at the end of the course when we receive our diplomas....

Steven Lyle Jordan · 07-29-2008, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeoffC

And the perfect reason why the Bible and others are likely not the word of God as suggested by some religious fanatics...in defence of their fanaticism...

Yes, the Bible and other documents were "translated" when transcribed, by whoever was in power at the time... primarily to make sure all those religious people were believing and doing exactly what the people in power wanted them to do. Among the earliest major examples, Romans merged the emerging Christian religion into the Roman culture by creating Catholicism, essentially based on existing Roman law and mores.

(This is not to say that the "Word of God" is not in there anymore... just that the details have been altered to fit those in power.)

This is a great class... and to think, all I expected out of this thread was a light-spirited debate on the shape of the world! I'll be right back, after I score some wings and a frapp down on the quad!

GeoffC · 07-29-2008, 09:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Yes, the Bible and other documents were "translated" when transcribed, by whoever was in power at the time... primarily to make sure all those religious people were believing and doing exactly what the people in power wanted them to do. Among the earliest major examples, Romans merged the emerging Christian religion into the Roman culture by creating Catholicism, essentially based on existing Roman law and mores.

(This is not to say that the "Word of God" is not in there anymore... just that the details have been altered to fit those in power.)

This is a great class... and to think, all I expected out of this thread was a light-spirited debate on the shape of the world! I'll be right back, after I score some wings and a frapp down on the quad!

Ah - Teacher - but the world by itself is boring - it needs variety, spice, that blue thing in the corner and, of course, all the crazy comings and goings in the Lounge....

pshrynk · 07-29-2008, 11:03 AM

Tax rolls, Beer, and Bibles. The very foundation of civilization.

The internet also allows for a broader range of communications, such as VOIP telephones that further erode barriers to world community.

Steven Lyle Jordan · 07-29-2008, 11:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pshrynk

The internet also allows for a broader range of communications, such as VOIP telephones that further erode barriers to world community.

Yes, VOIP that ties telephony, and all of its new iterations (texting, PTT, GPS, etc), into web communications. It adds yet another communications dimension into the mix, a sort of parallel dimension, creating two adjacent 3-dimensional spaces existing simultaneously.

Hmm... as Dr. Wood pointed out, communications tends to expand into more hands, and spread to include more users, and as it does, it changes. What will happen if everybody can create communications of their own? Will it ultimately all break down into 6 billion languages, all uninterpretable from each other?...

(What's that? oh... yes, here's a twenty... that's no whip on the frapp, please. Do you have wet-naps? Thanks...)

DixieGal · 07-29-2008, 11:24 AM

Getting gloomy there, Gus!

Think positive! Foundations are putting cell phones into the hands of women in the poorest parts of Africa. Those women then charge a fee for villagers to use the phone. Each time that technology is brought into a village, lives are changed for the better.

And as the world gets smaller, we have more neighbors to get to know. Nobody wants to bomb their neighbors (except ZP and the shrums).

If homogenizing the world's languages is the price we have to pay for peace, prosperity, and understanding, then let it happen, y'all.

07-26-2008, 11:13 PM	#1
Steven Lyle Jordan Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,478 Karma: 5171130 Join Date: Jan 2006 Device: none	Is the world really flat? I was just introduced to the book "The World is Flat: A brief history of the globalized world in the 21st century" by Thomas Friedman. Without getting into the details of the book, I immediately had to ponder: Has the internet really made the world flat? I don't think so. I see the internet as having created multiple parallel levels of communication, from very basic to incredibly complex, many of them interconnected and interrelated... as well as a "sub-level" of communication, collecting and acting upon data at a usually-hidden level. To me, this makes the internet not flat, but a three-dimensional collection of levels and sub-levels, operating concurrently and/or independently to each other. What say ye, Mobilereaders?

07-29-2008, 12:03 AM	#9
RWood Technogeezer Posts: 7,233 Karma: 1601464 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Virginia, USA Device: Sony PRS-500	Part 1: Transcribed from Very Old Lecture Notes Today’s topic is the Dominant Media Theory. First, a few announcements. New university rules this term prohibit smoking in lecture halls during class and no food, shall I say pizza, deliveries while class is in session. Moving on …. Enrichment reading recommendations are The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley and The Silent Language by Ed Hall. Great books. Not required, just great related reading. For our purposes media is the way one or more people communicate with others. Here within the Department of Communications we study both the content (sometimes called the message) but also the medium. Scholars differ as to which is more important and which one drives the other. At this point, we will look at it from the vantage of the medium first and the implications these changes have had on the messages transmitted and the society as a whole because of these changes in the medium. Our earliest ancestors had no language, as we know it today. They did communicate. In addition to physical contact, they had grunts, growls, yelps, and other sounds. Perhaps not the widest range of sounds, but it got a point across a bit. Scientists tell us that the brain devises concepts before it can figure out how to express them. Likewise, our early ancestors developed a verbal language to assist them in hunting because it often took more than one person to capture larger animals. Language was also useful in selecting the right fruits and vegetables. In these early days, they found that the group – call it tribe or clan or political party – can do more than a single person can. We have been doomed to civilization ever since then. Now before you go thinking that these are primitive societies, quite complex social structures were built with an oral language alone. Consider the Homer epics that we all studied in high school were passed down for generations from one person to another without ever being written until Homer got all the credit. What was limited was how large a group could be before variations crept into the language. This group over hear (point right) started a language that they taught to (point back right) another group which in turn taught it to (point to the whole left side) two other groups. Since these groups did not interact completely every day things changed. Consider the variations in speech just within the people in this room from Atlanta drawl to Bay State clipped and no one understands those from Long Island. One measure that many people use to measure languages is the complexity of their temporal relationships. Think back to your English class and the verb tenses you learned: Past, Present, Future, Future Perfect, &c. English has very few compared to French. Other languages have only a “now.” Some have no words for the future. Language adapts to the needs of the people using it. As most of you have already figured out when things exist in an oral form only they shift over time. Great for rumors, bad for laws. This leads to the next stage medium, writing. Writing developed to allow one generation to pass on what it knew to another later generation. It also allowed something to exist today and tomorrow, small things like laws. Early writing was picture based such as the cave paintings that were not too far removed from the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Early Babylonian clay tablets were a bit more portable but tended to stay in the same place until they broke. All written languages evolved over time to meet the demands of the society that created them with the exception of Korean that was devised completely by one of their Kings. Writing along with its spelling and punctuation change over time. Some are technology based others are a reflection of changes in the language itself. These will show up as we move forward with medium evolution. As we see, language allows a society to grow only so large before it fractures. A form of writing allows a larger society; but the general-king must be at the head of the army or at the very least, the eldest-son-the-king-to-be must head the army. Two developments shape the next stage, an easy to transport medium for writing and a way to put multiples of this together to form something more. Today we call the first one “paper” and the second is called the “codex.” Now the king can stay in their capitol or castle and dispatch orders to the troops as well as receive reports from them. Laws can easily be copied and propagated to every settlement within the realm. Uniform administration. Histories no longer depend on memory. Tax rolls and beer recipes can be written for future reference. Bibles were written and copied over and over. Have you noticed what’s happening as we come forward in time? At each change of Dominant Media, more and more people are involved in creating the content and that content is spread to an ever-widening audience. This is the key to Dominant Media. From here on it just gets faster, more people are involved at every stage, and the distribution gets wider and wider. A side benefit is that education levels rise, as more people are required at all levels. At some unknown date in China and later in 15th century Europe, the printing press was devised. Now the time consuming, error prone copying of manuscripts and Bibles can be created in one place and widely distributed. Like every change in the Dominant Media, this it enforces additional standardization in the mediums that went before it as it incorporates them into the new Dominant Media. A classic example of this is the variations in Latin glyphs (that’s a fancy term for letterforms, how you know an “A” is an “A”.) A side note for those who favor the content analysis path is that about this time the Spanish captured several Moor libraries and discovered the works of many Arab, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman writers. The western world was introduced to Plato, Aristotle, Algebra, and many other works and concepts that helped form the basis of the civilization we are in now. These previously cloistered works were now distributed throughout the western world thanks to the printing press. End of Part 1

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07-26-2008, 11:38 PM	#2
RWood Technogeezer Posts: 7,233 Karma: 1601464 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Virginia, USA Device: Sony PRS-500	I had close to the same reaction when I read the book (it seems like a lifetime or two ago.) While there is a greater connection and communication systems are changing, the world is far from flat. </professor mode on> We have had several shifts before in the Dominant Media. Each replaced the prior dominant media as the main communication system for the masses. Each new media took elements from the prior and presented it in a new light and provided new tools for manipulating both it and the masses. The first major advance was the development of language itself. From there it was writing, the codex, printing, radio, television, and now the Internet. If you will let me get by with "Proof is left to the student" I will be quiet and go back to reading. If you want more detail, you are warned that I taught this stuff for a few years. </professor mode off>

07-27-2008, 01:35 AM	#3
desertgrandma Enjoying the show.... Posts: 14,270 Karma: 10462841 Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Arizona Device: A K1, Kindle Paperwhite, an Ipod, IPad2, Iphone, an Ipad Mini & macAir	[QUOTE=RWood;222579]I had close to the same reaction when I read the book (it seems like a lifetime or two ago.) While there is a greater connection and communication systems are changing, the world is far from flat. </professor mode on> We have had several shifts before in the Dominant Media. Each replaced the prior dominant media as the main communication system for the masses. Each new media took elements from the prior and presented it in a new light and provided new tools for manipulating both it and the masses. The first major advance was the development of language itself. From there it was writing, the codex, printing, radio, television, and now the Internet. If you will let me get by with "Proof is left to the student" I will be quiet and go back to reading. If you want more detail, you are warned that I taught this stuff for a few years. </professor mode off>[/QUOTE I'm listening..........

07-27-2008, 06:15 AM	#6
basschick Wizard Posts: 1,096 Karma: 4695691 Join Date: May 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite	i guess whether the things he listed make the world flat depend soley on point of view. i work on the internet, and i suspect my view is askew (hey, take THAT, kevin smith!). i work with people from the philippines, the uk, india,slavakia, france, germany, canada and many other places in realtime on icq. some of the time i don't even know where people i work with are, and unlike some people i know, i often don't ask. i get paid in realtime over half the time, and almost all the people i pay i pay in realtime. recently someone asked me if a writer i sometime use and also supervise for 2 clients was a man or a woman, and i have no idea. it's definitely a different world than it was 15 years ago. but is it flat? not to me - it's exciting and very multi-dimensional.

07-27-2008, 06:14 PM	#8
RickyMaveety Holy S**T!!! Posts: 5,213 Karma: 108401 Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: San Diego, California!! Device: Kindle and iPad	I don't see the Internet as having made the world "flat" .... to me, it's made the six degrees of separation much more easily discovered. I mean, for example, how else could an average person like myself broadcast to hundreds or thousands of people the name of the town in which I live, and almost instantly find myself talking to the cousin of one of those people who just happens to live in the town next to me. And, the friend the cousin was with at the party just happens to be really good friends with the lady who designed and built my house. I think what the Internet has done is allow people to find those unknown connections much (much) more quickly, and it allows people to cut across lines of class, culture, race, religion ... you name it ... in order to find them.

07-29-2008, 04:26 AM	#10
GeoffC Chocolate Grasshopper ... Posts: 27,600 Karma: 20821184 Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Scotland Device: Muse HD , Cybook Gen3 , Pocketbook 302 (Black) , Nexus 10: wife has PW	Quote "Now the time consuming, error prone copying of manuscripts and Bibles can be created in one place and widely distributed.".... And the perfect reason why the Bible and others are likely not the word of God as suggested by some religious fanatics...in defence of their fanaticism... Oh professor, what time do we return for part 2? Do we need to pay Pshrynk at the door at the end of each lecture - or will you accept a cheque at the end of the course when we receive our diplomas....

07-29-2008, 11:03 AM	#13
pshrynk Beepbeep n beebeep, yeah! Posts: 11,726 Karma: 8255450 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: La Crosse, Wisconsin, aka America's IceBox Device: iThingie, KmkII, I miss Zelda!	Tax rolls, Beer, and Bibles. The very foundation of civilization. The internet also allows for a broader range of communications, such as VOIP telephones that further erode barriers to world community.

07-29-2008, 11:24 AM	#15
DixieGal Hi There! Posts: 7,473 Karma: 2930523 Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Ft Lauderdale Device: iPad	Getting gloomy there, Gus! Think positive! Foundations are putting cell phones into the hands of women in the poorest parts of Africa. Those women then charge a fee for villagers to use the phone. Each time that technology is brought into a village, lives are changed for the better. And as the world gets smaller, we have more neighbors to get to know. Nobody wants to bomb their neighbors (except ZP and the shrums). If homogenizing the world's languages is the price we have to pay for peace, prosperity, and understanding, then let it happen, y'all.

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