Brave New World

Finally we have entered into the new year. The world itself has seen many changes in the past year. The Lebanon-Israel war, N.Korea and Iran's nuclear interests, the abysmal Iraq war and its "Rethinking", the democrats took control of US, US immigration reforms, the Katrina frauds, the stock frauds, the end of Enron frauds, the Darfur Genocide, Zidane's Headbutt, Italy's victory, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes get married and have kids(Seriously, the things people consider as news!), the cartoon chaos that rocked the Muslim world, the changing of media landscape and to top it all up the Death Of The Dictator-Saddam Hussein.

These are just the news that rocked the world. There a million gazillion things that happened to you and me and the people in general that changed ours and their lives. It was a staggering year and it has come to an end. As we enter the beginning of 2007 my only hope is that we learn from our mistakes and move on. I am going to write about something that has forever changed our landscape-The Rise Of Internet and Globalization.

Now every person can become a journalist, a rock star, an actor, a play write, an author, almost anything under the sun. Though you cant show off your talents in the mainstream level but still there are millions of eyes watching you! You can post your views for the world to see in blogs, you can post your own song and maintain a fan database in myspace.com, you can post your videos in youtube.com, you can write and publish your book even in paperback and hardcover and sell it independently, you can sell almost anything from your underwear to your house through the internet. You are the king of your own world ruling from your living room.

Some artists got mainstream breaks through this personal propaganda like the Arctic Monkeys, they really took off from myspace.com. They had a huge fan base and were signed a record deal. Many authors got a book break through their blogs. A guy actually got a show in MTV through his videos supplied in youtube! The trend of entertainment is changing, the underdogs and the undergrounds are beginning to rise. This trend is just not confined to entertainment. Even the landscape of news reporting is changing. Young amateurs armed with nothing more than pens, notepads, digicams and recorders hunt down fabulous stories and post it up for the world to see. No more are we dependent only on CNN, BBC for our daily scoop. Actually many of the news channels have been taking news from these obscure sources! It is truly the age of individuals.

At first during the 1900's it was a world of states and colonies. Globalization had reached its heights, migration was at an all time high, trade was prosperous, industrialization was booming. It was all good until the Great War began. It brought all the development to a stand still. Thousands were killed and millions were left homeless. The Great War had brought widespread destruction. But, this was hardly anything compared to the Second World War. This war devoured 6.5 million people and leaving yet more millions in despotism. This was an epoch of chaos, its darkness engulfing the world. Everyone was affected one way or another. It took a long time for the world to recuperate. Many are still recovering from the terrible war.

After the 1950's the worlds trade, economy began to improve slightly. The landscape was again changing, it was becoming a world of companies. Now, companies were competing from all around the world. It was a race to the finish. This time saw rise of multinationals, huge industries and gargantuan economies.

This landscape again saw a major development in 1990's with the breaking of the Berlin Wall. The World was soon to become flat. Globalization was at full speed now and it was speeding up even more. China and India were rapidly becoming the new production centers of the world. The underdeveloped nations were soon going to become the hotspots of all industralization. It is interesting to see that around the same time the internet was gripping the world and plunging it deeper in the depth of globalization. It was making the world more flat. It was literally ironing the world flat!

The end of 1990's and beginning of 2000's saw yet another major upheaval. The world was becoming a battle ground of individuals from all corners of the world. These individuals were using the tools of globalization and internet to make their presence felt in the world. It was becoming a huge competitive global market where individuals could compete even with the giant multinationals.

Communication systems, transport, industries etc were undergoing rapid technological advancements. Everything was becoming faster, more efficient and much more cheaper. Such advancements allowed dislocation of raw materials, manufactured goods and services much easier. Now is the age of outsourcing, off-shoring, in-sourcing, importing, exporting, global supply chains and most importantly informing. All these activities are rapidly changing the face of the modern world. Goods and services are much cheaper and far more efficient.

Through outsourcing companies can speed up their tedious back office work by passing on the monotonous works to far off countries and get back the finished work. This not only saves time but also money. The cost of maintaining one person for such kind of work in a developed country like US is five times the cost of maintaining the same kind of person doing the same kind of work in a developing country like India. This back office work can range from software development to accounts to telemarketing. A call you make to the call center upon losing your luggage in NYC may be transferred directly to Bangalore and you are most probably talking to a young Indian girl with an improvised American accent!!!

In off-shoring you are just reducing your manufacturing costs. You are just taking your building machine to a place where labor and resources are cheaper. And we all know where the worlds building center has come up-China. Through amazing communication systems provided by internet every activity can be tracked by the main office while sitting a 1000 miles away.

Insourcing is the practice of calling in an outside company take over a part of your enterprise that isn't part of your core competency. In other you are saying "Dude, I am not good at this. Do this for me and take the cut so I can concentrate on what I am really good at." You are taking off your work load.

Global Supply Chain, now this is interesting. The satellites integrated with efficient manufacturing plants and a state of the art transport system makes global supply chain. Let me give you an example, imagine I order a Dell system. The motherboard might be from Korea, the RAM from China, the CD-Drive from Taiwan and ultimately all of it might be assembled somewhere in Vietnam and finally delivered to my doorstep in Singapore. Only a highly efficient supply system with an amazingly accurate tracking system can give such efficiency.

Informing as the name suggests brings all these innovations on a plane ground and makes it available to everyone around the world. In this media and internet are the informants. Google, Amazon, CNN, BBC etc are the big players who integrate this system intermittently into a perpetually dynamic machine constantly working towards making the world more small.

I have just briefly mentioned about the changing landscape. If you want a greater insight you can read The World Is Flat-Thomas L.Friedman. This blog is inspired from the book. I've only included things that really had more of a profound impact. The book dwells deeper into the field of globalization and current situation of economics. Its in layman's terms so no one would find it difficult. Maybe boring for some but definitely not difficult.

So my comrades welcome to 2007, to a Brave New World where with the right brains and hard work and gods grace you can match up to the world. Its the age of individuals-its YOUR time.
Rise up, take the challenge, make a difference. Its not too difficult but it aint too easy either. With a positive outlook and a prayer in your mind embark on your journey to fulfill your destiny, to live your dream, to be the person you want to be.