Globalization and "The World is Flat"

"Thomas L. Friedman, a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, in his new book, "The World is Flat - a Brief History of the Twenty-First Century" nicely sums up the explosion of digital-technology advances during the past 15 years and places the phenomenon in its global context. Just consider that the Web, search engines, digital photography, iPods, e-mail, PDAs, the browser, file sharing, Wi-Fi, and a dozen other cutting-edge technologies have not only come to dominate economics and the workplace but have also helped reshape the political world -- all in less than a generation. Change has been so rapid and overwhelming that there hasn't been time to keep track of the developments, much less to understand their implications. The world is flattening, Friedman says -- meaning it is increasingly interconnected. This can raise the poor from poverty, nourish a worldwide middle class, and even spread democracy." (above quote is taken from a recent Business Week Online article.

I think, we in the Mission College Paralegal Program have seen an explosion - see the Development of our Webpage to see how much our program has "flattened" since we first started to develop online materials in August 1997, and then in the Summer of 2002 inaugurated our completely online certificate to respond to the needs of our students. Probably the singlemost driving factor in the "wild fire" expansion of our online program, is "driving itself" - that is the time it takes to drive on our L.A. Freeways so consumes our students' time, that they now save that time and instead 'telecommute' to our classes - thus saving "lost time" on the L.A. freeways and investing that "otherwise lost freeway time" into their legal studies.

Well enough about technology. Prof. J.