Flat World

Not being involved with any outsourcing business, I experience the flatness of the world through online communities, media streaming, file and information sharing, e-mails and chatting, etc. Through social networking websites like Friendster, I can stay in touch with my distant friends and relatives. Instead of going to a mall, I can actually stay at home and shop online from anywhere around the world. And as a student who is usually bombarded with a lot of research work, I rely on search engines like Google and Yahoo, and on online encyclopedias, dictionaries and news articles. I don’t need to buy books or go through the hassle of searching books in a library and checking them out one by one for information and pictures anymore. Likewise, I don’t need to buy audio or video CD’s because I can download songs through LimeWire or watch a movie in YouTube. I can do all these things, yet all I need to pay for is my PLDT DSL connection and the only place I need to go to is in front of my computer.

The rapid changes in technology have made my life more comfortable. Compared to the people who lived a century before me, I can do more things with less effort exerted and less money spent. I am indeed empowered as an individual through the internet. The things that only professionals and rich people can do or obtain before, anyone like me can do or obtain as well today. And as long as I have an internet access, I can never be too far from the other side of the globe, just like the call center employees Thomas Friedman talked about in his book, The World is Flat, thanks to the new technology brought to the Philippines.

Philippines is not a dominant player in what Friedman calls a flat world, but it is fast catching up. In recent years, it has become the destination of choice for outsourcing due to the large pool of trainable and highly skilled English-speaking labor force it offers, as well as the reduced cost of operations. Sykes Enterprises, Convergys Corp.,