"The World is 'Flat'" in the Age of Globalization

As he describes in The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman refers to the decreasing steepness of upward social mobility and access to a longer, healthier, wealthier (not just financially, but a life of more in general) life. Despite the deceptive title, Friedman describes “flatness”* as, “how more people can plug, play, compete, connect, and collaborate with more equal power than ever before”. He attributes this largely to technology, which has advanced exponentially since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.

Globalization began in 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed to the Caribbean and made contact with the New World. This was during the European Renaissance, when medieval Christian faith in religion and established though made way for Greco-Roman ideals of humanism and the real world. During that time, however, the feudal system was still the dominant social economic structure of society. Most people were peasants and never ventured far from the land of their lord’s estate. For these people, social mobility was non-existent, and one had to wait until the end of their life to reach eternal salvation. Since then, the spreading of Western ideals (democracy, liberalism, meritocracy, egalitarianism, secularization, etc.) and the rapid increase in technology has lead to a world where this upward social mobility is easier to obtain.

For most of history, we’ve had an arduous struggle with death and population. Pathogenic diseases have caused millions of deaths around the world. Malaria alone is believed to have killed half of all Homo sapiens (sapiens) that have lived on Earth, ever. By the Industrial Revolution, various innovations arose that let us take control of our own population. The 19th Century brought an understanding into microscopic biology and the realization that many God-sent punishments for sin were in fact communicable diseases preventable through science and planning. Diseases like smallpox and polio, which have left many children dead in their parents arms, are eradicated today. In the past, people would have as many children as possible. Those who survived childhood would become help and learn from their parents their role in society. For most of human history, the average life expectancy was around 30. Today, the global average for men and women is 72 (World Health Organization). With disease and death at an all-time low and people continuing to reproduce, population skyrocketed in the late 19th Century. That was around the time when pregnancy prevention was invented. This allowed adults to focus on their careers instead of looking after children. As the birth rate lowered, population stabilized and we never reached apocalyptic levels of unemployment. With more control over life and death, people weren’t stuck in the fields for much longer.

Communication is an important part of life for any organism. For humans, it is vital for civilization to function, in both “flat” and “non-flat” societies. Initially, the farthest we could travel was on foot. The domestication of horses gave the riders an advantage in speed and travel distance, but the horse could still get tired, sick, or die. The advent of modern forms of transportation, from ocean-going ships to trains, automobiles, and planes has allowed for anyone to reach most parts of the world. Communication technology has also become faster. Word of mouth gave way to letters (months), followed by the telegraph, radio, television, and today’s Internet (virtually instantly). The amount of information has also increased, from the amount of information one could fit on a stone tablet, to petabytes of information stored digitally. People from all over the world can communicate through audiovisual channels. The digital age has provided a vast space where people can interact over long distances, in ways never before seen. Of course, there are problems like cyberbullying, hacking, physical isolation and cocooning, etc. With more connections and more communication comes more information, more collective learning, and more upward mobility.

There has been a push to make each of these innovations more efficient. In economics, it is always better to make something faster, smaller, and cheaper. This gives access to more people, especially more people of lower classes who had previously been without. As more innovation, more information, and more social acceptance reaches more people, it is easier for them to attain higher positions in society and higher qualities of life.



*(Disclaimer: The planet Earth on which we live is an oblate spheroid. From our three-dimensional, human-sized perspective, it is not flat.)