“1. While Tom Friedman was in Bangalore, my family and I were in Delhi working with new leaders of campus ministries from India, Thailand, Nepal, Korea, Mexico, Kenya, and the USA. While Tom Friedman was busy writing for the New York Times, he claimed to have been sleeping or “otherwise engaged.” Well, his previous book the “Lexus and the Olive Tree” is what he claims led him off the trail of globalization. Friedman has reduced much of our previous discussion about Modernity to simple stratas of globalization. Globalization 1.0 began with Columbus. Gobalization 2.0 began around 1800 led by the multinational companies searching for markets and labor. Global markets began, but now the forces that flatten the world, or “level the playing field”, have really begun to shape the destinies of all of us.
2. Major Dates at the End of 20th Century – The internet, e-commerce, and other forces have launched us into globalization 3.0. We have gone from small world to tiny. Now the major players are no longer multinational corporations, but every individual can now join the global competition and opportunities of the day. Now the West is no longer the great force in globalization; the forces that are flattening and shrinking the world are empowering individuals around the world, including those in remote and traditionally un-developed countries.
3. A friend and former Youth With A Mission staff person in Madison, WI returned from Chennai a few years ago with exciting vision for a new web development business. That business sells sites in the USA, but it has a back room with web designers in Chennai. This flattened world is readily available. My first web domain and site, www.haystack.org, was launched in 1995. The world has rapidly changed, and the capacity to communicate with my international team is easier and more accessible than ever before. Our next international committee meeting is next week with members gathering from India, Korea, Kenya, and five US states. The past four of our board meetings have been online with web conferencing software drawing together members from five US states. The world truly is flat and our ministry is getting on board with these technological changes as soon as they become available. In 2001, we had an international conference gathering people from S. Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and Egypt through simultaneous video conferencing for four days. Yes, we had difficulty, but with our minimal resources the conference did work much of the time where other major corporations with expansive resources had failed.
4. Today young people in Thailand or India has just as much opportunity to connect to this amazing new flat world, Globalization 3.0, and create new industries. It’s completely reasonable to believe that the next big technological advance will not come from a major international corporation, but from a young genius at an internet café in Malaysia or through an open source platform developed by two young computer programmers in Kenya.
5. The internet fever and the stock market boom created incredible optimism in telecom companies. Friedman said they didn’t consider the demand and they supplied the world with fiber-optic cables. The bubble burst, but the hardwire cables remained at pennies on the dollar. This crazy period changed the world with new flattened competition, only the result was more flattening than anyone imagined. The oversupply created price wars with a great boon to consumers. This flattening made competition even better, and broke down regional differences.
6. The failure of the 1996 telecom information act left many US households out of the loop. Businesses were wired, but homes were not in the US. India had a better access to the new information super-highway than did the average American. This is how Friedman points out how the flat world for those who get it right. If governments don’t get it right for their citizens, the flat world accessibility will put those citizens outside the realm of participation.
7. The world of communications and collaboration is changing fast and that presents us with unfrequented opportunities. But the train is leaving the station and we will need to run fast to catch it. Communication between individuals across cultural and geographic boundaries has become easy. Friendships, partnerships, ministry, and prayer can be sustained to some degree through this new flat world.
8. The good news is that technology has opened new vistas of communication and broken down centuries old barriers to the gospel. “The Information Age is boundary blind,” O’Brien writes, “There are no unique continental or regional areas identified exclusively as ‘mission fields’.”
9. Our participation in the flat world as missions and ministries does not just happen. We need to step into this as “spiritual flatteners”. I will report more at out next meeting, so do come prepared. Remember, God has been speaking to us over the past two years about the value of communications and over the past three years about healing our nervous system. I believe He is presenting us with both opportunities and tools to do exactly that, but we will have to commit to take a lead in this. It cannot be left to writers, researchers and IT buffs.
10. This new platform; ‘It is a global, Web-enabled platform for multiple forms of collaboration. This platform enables individuals, groups, companies, and universities anywhere in the world to collaborate -- for the purposes of innovation, production, education, research, entertainment, and, alas, war-making -- like no creative platform ever before. This platform now operates without regard to geography, distance, time, and, in the near future, even language. Going forward, this platform is going to be at the centre of everything. Wealth and power will increasingly accrue to those countries, companies, individuals, universities, and groups who get three basic things right: [1] the infrastructure to connect with this flat-world platform, [2] the education to get more of their people innovating on, working off of, and tapping into this platform, and, finally, [3] the governance to get the best out of this platform and cushion its worst side effects.” (2005:205)”