Quote of the Day

8:02 PM , , , 0 Comments

On the way home from work today I was listening to a lecture by Thomas Friedman recorded for MIT entitled "The World is Flat: 3.0". The lecture was essentially about the changing of the world's economic and innovative landscapes, and he has documented three "changes" :

  1. 1492 - ~1880s - This period changed the "size of the world from large to medium - this change was driven by countries (Spain discovering America, Britain colonizing India etc)
  2. ~1880s - 2000 - This period changed from medium to small - this time driven by companies, as companies operated on international scales and above and beyond the geographical limits of the countries
  3. 2000 - Ongoing - this has changed the size of the world to tiny - and is now driven by individuals, primarily changed by the introduction of the PC and the internet, allowing users to connect/upload/work/create with people from all corners of the world.

My favourite quote was on speaking of how the Brits owned the 19th Century, the Americans the 20th and the Chinese will own the 21st:

"As my grandma always used to say, sitting in her rocking chair beside the fire, with her blanket over her legs, never seed a century over to a country that censored Google.."


You can check the lecture yourself over at the MIT open courseware site

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