Module 10

Jacob Ready

Module 10

IST 1100

Module 10

     This story was written in 1946 and it was very surprising to me reading it and seeing how much it is like our internet today.  It talks about A logic named Joe it is about a computer that produces Logics which are a lot like our computers we have today. It talks about how the company has a filter on in where the people in the company have access to it but that was until Joe shows up and allows the public to see anything they want to make the searches that they ask for to be more accurate.  I feel like this is almost identical to what we have as our modern internet.  You can literally search anything you want now. It is disgusting thinking about the images that have been posted on the internet today and how so many people can view and search for anything.  We wonder how our criminals are so smart and how they can find ways around the system to receive illegal weapons and build bombs.  Well all of these so called illegal things can be found on their home desktop.  It scares me to think about all the things that can be bought.  After reading this article I learned a lot about how amazing this all used to sound to people back in 1946.  This story would have scared me to death is I had read it back then and to think only 10 years ago we didn’t have cell phones and now I pretty much have a computer in the palm of my hand.  I think that sometimes we would be better off censoring the internet even thought we lose part of our freedom by doing this. But I realize that there is a point the censoring and I think that China is a perfect example of a better way to censor things.  I don’t think we need to take it to North Korea level or anything but just being able to watch what people are searching for would probably be in everyone’s best interest.

     The potential for our internet is beyond what our minds can imagine yet we have the few criminals who like to mess it all up.  But I think overall our internet is going to make us more involved with everyone around us and allow us to be more efficient in everything we do.

Module 13

Jacob Ready

Module 13

2/5/2012

Final module

Module 13

     After taking this class I have learned a lot about how the world’s technology has grown a tremendous amount.  Most of us including myself were not aware of how much we had actually grown.  After the reading we had to do in The World Is Flat I learned a lot about how foreign countries are working in our country on a daily basis from their own country.  I had no idea that most of the time that I call to talk to the call center of a company it is actually someone in India.  Overall the class expanded my horizon a lot and I learned how to understand the internet and how is has grown to the tremendous size that it is now.  Friedman humbled me after reading his book.  All this time I thought that America was far surpassing everyone else on earth in the technology. Now I realize that we are becoming flat and that we are soon going to be on the same playing field.  I believe that this class is very important part of our education process because it makes you think about how much the internet is a part of our lives.  It also helps us be more appreciative of the luxuries that we have and how easy it is to do homework from home and not have to go to class everyday to learn.  You can receive the information you need when class is missed.  This luxury has affected me a lot because of playing golf here at Weber State and trying to get all the information I need to pass each class.

     After thinking about how I would improve this class I couldn’t think of a lot of things that really popped out for me.  The one thing that I can really say I enjoyed was the little article in the middle of our reading of The World Is Flat. I really enjoyed the breaks you gave us from the readings during the middle of the semester it helped keep me focused and ready the read the next section after.  I just wanted to say thank you being so clear and helpful during the semester and that this is one of the best online classes that I have taken and really enjoyed learning about a wired society and Freidman’s book.

Module 12

Jacob Ready

IST 1100

April 1, 2012

Module 12

Module 12

     Bill Joys was a very interesting read for me it was fascinating yet scary in the same way.  He described the engineering, nanotechnology and robotics also known as GNR.  He talked about how it would extinguish us as humans being and how we would lose all control of all robotics and they would become in control of humans.  Mr. Joy found this to be very disturbing obviously but as I have seen in the past about technology it always has defects and problems along the way.  I couldn’t help but think about iron man as I read this article and think about the technologies that they had and to think that maybe that is our future or even the movie I robot with will smith.  The fact that would could have robots take over.

     I think that the paragraph about how robots would be able to have a consciousness and be able to make their own decisions and he talked about how they robots would take over our workforce.  I think that is a little out of reach personally. I believe that his fears are justified and we need to be aware of the technology we are creating and that we need to always be in control.  I think that we as people will always have a high power of thought and it would be very hard replicate our mind power and thought because we are always growing smarter and better every generation. I understand Mr. Joy’s fear of the future but I think we are very long ways away from the technology that he is talking about.  I don’t think that technologies will every take over but I do know that it is huge part of our lives.  I almost have a heart attack if my phone is gone for longer than ten minutes.  I understand that technology is only going to become more and more a part of our lives but I don’t think I will every be able to think about how robots will ever take over our lives and become who is in control.  I don’t think we have to be scared of the technology that is coming out I think we are moving in a positive direction and yes it is going to effect the work force and the way that business are run but humans will always be in control of the technology since we are the ones who are creating it.

module 11

Jacob Ready

4/25/2012

IST 1100

Module 11

Module 11

     The movie that I decided to watch was Eagle Eye and how a master computer is put in charge of the entire U.S and took look over us like a parent.  In the movie cameras are placed around every corner and we are always being watched by some and crime ceases. The computer manipulates the people into doing things that it wants them to do because of a terrorist attack on the computer. There is no way of tracking what it is doing because it was in control of everything and watched over everyone from every camera in the U.S.  I thought it was very interesting to think that a computer could become that smart.  It is very unrealistic that we would have a computer watching all of us from a different camera angle at all times.  The computer was connected to master computer that was located in a secret place where nobody could get in and look at what the computer is doing.  The two people figured out that it was the computer that was doing all this in the end and they knew that they had to somehow get in and shut it down without the computer finding out but the computer had control over all technology so it was a scary moment in the times that we live in.  If this were to happen to us now days we wouldn’t know what to do without out our cell phones or any other type of machinery.  The reason that the computer was messed with a terrorist organization got into the computer system and installed into the computer that would mess with people and try to have other important people killed or the single mother’s son would be killed if she didn’t do exactly as the computer asked her.

     The computers in this movie were very unrealistic  like most movies are with super computers like this but it makes you think about how much we rely on computers and how they can affect our daily lives so much.  Computers and technology in general have become a daily part of our lives and will continue to grow more and more the smart we become.  I just hope we never forget how it was before all the technology so we understand how far we have come and so that we don’t have this movie as a future terrorist attack in the future.

Module 9

Jacob Ready

Module 9

3/4/2012

IST 1100

Module 9

     How the dell computer was created and used is fascinating to me and is one of the most efficiently made and run computer companies around at least from the research I have done.  Last year I took a TBE class that made me research how to buy a computer.  I decided to get a dell me because they literally let you design any and every part of the computer you want you can choose laptop or desktop and how much memory you would like on your computer. I researched it and Dell has 6 global factories where the computers are created and build for each individual customer.  It is amazing to see how far we have come through the world of computers.  Dell is a company that revolves around the customer and doesn’t take the easiest way out by just having a few different kinds of computers but you can literally step by step have your computer exactly the way you want it.

     I feel the Al-Qaeda if they are successful in anything they want to do you have to have a supply chain of some kind.  If there was no supply chain I don’t think anything would ever get done or accomplished.  By the way they accomplish terrorist attacks unfortunately that are very good at getting the job done so they must have a very good supply chain.

     I believe that the curse of oil is mostly have to do with us Americans deciding to run all  our cars and machinery off of oil and we will pay as much money as we need to, to get more of it.  Others countries realize the problem that we have and take full advantage of the fact that we need oil every day.  Oil is a big problem and us as Americans need to make the decision to make a change or keep pay ridiculous prices for the oil that we have to keep shipping in. I think if we don’t change oil is going to become one of the biggest problems we have.

Module 8

Jacob Ready

2/26/2012

Module 8

Module 8

     The most important part of education in today’s society is being connected to the world around us and being able to be connected to others at anytime and anywhere.  Being connected can sometimes make things very complicated yet also very helpful.  Being able to contact my teachers at anytime has been a huge change for me since the time I was younger.  I was never able to call my teacher on her cell phone or even email her when I had a question on my homework assignment.  It has made learning easier and more efficient.  Computers have affected most everything we have to do at our school here at Weber State.  Many of the classes that I have personally taken here at Weber State have been online classes.  These classes in the past have never been capable of being a part of our educations.  I play on the golf team here at Weber State; I’m not able to always be in class so computers have made it easier to receive an education without actually attending a class. I can get the information that is needed of a computer anywhere that has computer access.  Usually at every hotel that we stay at during the trips has access to wi-fi.

  We were asked to explain how computers have been used in my education.  I think computers are the best way of learning.  Like the book we have been reading about computer have leveled everything we no longer are just students in a class and the only way of contacting our teacher or turning in homework is by coming to class.  We now turn in our assignments to an online classroom called connect or blackboard.

     Computers have changed education and are becoming more and more a part of our lives.  Students at my brothers high school are now receiving laptops for the year to reduce the costs of the classes over the years and not having to pay teachers.  Without computers we would never be able to do these types of classes unless the kids had laptops from home.

MOdule 7

Jacob Ready

IST1100

Module 7

2/20/2012

Module 7

After readying the chapters assigned to us I learned that some countries or regions are better at doing some things than other countries or regions because some countries may be better at specific things such as shipping to other by have a port of air strip close to them.   Whereas other may need to have additional cost just to get the materials to those areas where they can be shipped out.  Another advantage is being about to create the good with the raw materials that you have from your home land rather than having to ship materials in you could make or grow them yourselves. Other advantages that are having the work force available to be able to get the work done that is available.

     Self directed consumers are the way that people lead to other businesses through the way they react to the way they feel about a company publically.  Face book for me and many others now has become a huge part of people’s lives and every day I hear about some company that someone got screwed over by and they want to let everyone know that it was not right and want to change the way that people feel about them.  Other way that it is changing is through Twitter I have never personally used twitter but I know that many celebrities do and we are always hearing their opinion on something that they believe is true and you can see the way that people react to that and it can hurt the way that other feel about that company.

     The third and final question was about is globalization mean Americanization? I thought a lot about this and realized that American culture has become a huge part of the global culture but I still think that we will always have cultures around the world that want to keep it the way that they were born into.  Americanization is happening to everyone and people are having to change to make moves up in the business world since America is such a huge part of the global economy.

Module 6

Jacob Ready

IST 1100

Module 6

2/12/2012

Free trade is an economic theory that involves the analysis and function of importing and exporting goods without restriction. Many nations engage in free trade to ensure their citizens have enough economic resources or consumer goods for meeting various needs or wants. Free trade to me would be a very cool and awesome way of think but isn’t necessarily realistic. We say that we have free trade but every country has some form of restrictions on what goes in and out of their countries. Free trade is important to the U.S because of the amount of good that we ship in to our country it would be very costly if we were being taxed on all the oil that is brought in.

     The skills and traits that make up a new middler is a person who is able to cooperate and make changes with all the new technology. They stay on the sides of both being able to make changes and cooperate with everyone around them. Freidman talks about the new middle being going green and making the changes we need to keep our planet alive.

That last point that Freidman was trying to teach us about how CQ + PQ is greater than your IQ. What this means curiosity and passion factor is more important than IQ levels.  This personally means the most to me because it believes that this is one of the most important things that I have ever been told.  I have learned through all the work that I have done that work is more about hard work and how much you put into things than about how high your IQ is. I was told this when I was younger from my dad that it’s not about what you know but who you know. I have never really take that to heart till I had to start looking for jobs and I realized that throughout my life time every job that I have ever had has come from someone that I know.  I believe that every opportunity that has come or arisen for hasn’t been because of a specific skill that I have learned from a class. I have learned that personal skills get you everywhere in life. In conclusion Freidman’s book has taught me more about business than any other book than I have ever read.

Module 4

Jacob Ready

1/29/2012        

Module 4

IT Job Interview

Module 4

     I conducted an interview with my friend back in Boise Idaho.  He works on the geek squat at the best buy that I live by.  I first started off with a brief explanation of the class that I am in and he thought it was very interesting how we have finally decided to come into the reality and decide that we all need to understand that we are being taken over by technology and that we are losing jobs to a computer.  After briefing him on what I was doing I told him that I was interviewing him on his job and what it all entails. He explained to me that he really enjoys his job and loves feeling the satisfaction of being to help people every day.  He explains how some days he gets a little frustrated with the occasional grandparents trying to fix their computers.  He said the best part of his job is always learning something new every day and continually gaining experience with computers.  I thought about what he had said about gaining experience and asked him if this experience would help him with future jobs.  He told me that this job is probably the best thing that he could possibly have right now with the technology expansion that we are having.  He explained how it helps him stay ahead of the curve and every company needs a computer tech. and technology is the new and upcoming jobs. 

     The second part of the interview I decided to compare it to the book that we have been reading and ask him what he thought about what was going on.  I told him a few of the interesting facts that I had learned from the book.  He told me that he isn’t surprised at all about what is going on.  He said he knew that other countries would be catching up with us.  I asked him if he had heard anything out of the ordinary that I might now have heard from my book and he said that he had actually read the book that we are reading in class and said that the world is flat is one of the most eye opening books he has ever read and that is part of the reason that he works for the geek squad today.  The book inspired him to become involved in what the world is becoming and to try and learn what he can so that we don’t fall behind.   I learned a lot from my friend and after the interview I realized that I am learning more everyday about how technology and computers are changing our world in ways that would have absolutely blown Americans away ten years ago.  Everyone on earth can be in contact with each other in a matter of second and information can travel from place to place faster than we thought was ever possible.  I feel the next step in technology will be having email as our only source of a written information rather than hand written letters of contracts but just send an email or fax sign it then send it back.  I feel than our national postal service will only be used for delivering items not mail.  This interview was very exciting and I learned a lot from this and that I may want to get involved with computer before I get left in the dust.

Module 5

Jacob Ready

Module 5

IST 1100

2/5/2012

Module 5

            After reading the pages in the book I am learning so much form this book and am realizing that the world is much bigger and defiantly “flatter” than I thought it was.  One of the important things that Freidman talked about was the Triple convergence which was in addition to the ten flatteners that were three additional components that acted on the flatteners to create a new flatter global playing field. The first up until the year 2000, the ten flatteners were semi-independent from one another.  An example of independence is the inability of one machine to perform multiple functions. When work-flow software and hardware converged, multiple functions such as e-mail, fax, printing, copying and communicating were able to be done from one machine. Around the year 2000, all the flatteners converged with one another. This convergence could be compared to complementary goods, in that each flattener enhanced the other flatteners; the more one flattener developed, the more leveled the global playing field became.

The second was after the emergence of the ten flatteners a new business model was required to succeed. While the flatteners alone were significant, they would not enhance productivity without people being able to use them together. Instead of collaborating vertically, business needed to begin collaborating horizontally.

            The third was after the Berlin wall fell countries that had followed the Soviet economic model including India, China, Russia, and the nations of Eastern Europe, Latin America and Central Asia- began to open up their economies to the world.  When this happened it added new brain power and the whole playing field enhanced horizontally across the globe.

                        One of the most disturbing things that I read in this book was the fact that an Indian company won a contract for the chance to upgrade the unemployment department of Indiana and were going to have employees move from India to here to work when they said that they were going to hire locally.  I thought that is was ridiculous that we would hire a Indian firm instead because they could make a higher bid on the contract because the Indiana firm was too small of a company to big 16 million dollars.

            The last and final part of what I felt was important about what Freidman had said was about intellectual property.  I had never heard of intellectual property is any innovation that a company has come up with and it is a very big issue because it gives companies the right to say that they own certain products and that other companies can’t steal it and use it for their uses without some sort of repayment. The reason this is so important is because businesses from overseas are using the same things that we have created to make more of the items in a cheaper way and it is becoming a problem for companies within the United States.

Module 3

Jacob Ready

1-22-12

Module 3

Module 3

     Friedman does a great job of explaining how we do business in the United States and the way we share business is through off shoring.  Off shoring is the internal relocation of a company’s manufacturing or other processes to a foreign land to take advantage of the less costly operation there.  China’s entrance in the world trade organization allowed for greater competition in the playing field. Now countries such a Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil must compete against China and each other to have business offshore to them.  Off shoring is different for outsourcing in the fact that we are not just sub contracting certain parts of business when we use off shoring we are actually moving the business to them they do not have to talk to us from across the world.  We are actually in their countries and working where they live.  Off shoring has completely changed the way that all Americans run their businesses.  An example of this in my home town is the company Micron. Micron is a huge part of my community and I would say over half of the kids I know have a parent who is working for Micron.  Micron in the past ten year has decided to move to Japan and use off shoring because the work there is so much cheaper than it is here.  I completely disagree with what company owners are doing I realize that it is cheaper and you will make more money in the process.  I don’t think they realize that it is a matter of respect and to first take care of the people within your own company first not just move on to whatever is cheaper.

     Friedman talks so much about how companies use what they have and take advantage of what power they have and to use every resource to the best of their abilities.  He talks about a company that we all know very well, Wal-Mart.  He talks about Wal-Mart being the best example of what a supply chain is.  Friedman compares the modern retail supply chain to a river.  He explains how Wal-Mart uses technology to streamline item sales distribution and shipping to better their company.  Everyone knows that Wal-Mart is the cheapest of any of the retail stores out there and that is why Wal-Mart has the success that it has.  It is one of the best companies out there and they have masters supply chaining.

      Friedman in the reading talked a lot about how people who you think could never be involved in activities are now involved in everything because of a search engine you may have heard of called Google.  Google and other search engines are the prime example of how we keep people informed. Friedman wrote, “Never before in the history of the planet have so many people on their own had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.”  The growth of our search engines is tremendous an example of this is how Friedman wrote that Google is now processing roughly one billion searches per day, up from 150 million just three years ago.  It is almost scary how much we have grown. I remember as a kid how my Dad would say to me when I asked him how to spell a word he would tell me to go look it up in a dictionary of in an encyclopedia.  Now day’s books such as those are never even touched.  If we need anything now we just say type it into to Google.  I think it is very cool how the world is changing through technology and I am really learning a lot while reading through this book and is opening my eyes to the world and making me realize how easily we are all connected now.

Module 2

Jacob Ready

1/15/2012

IST 1100

Module 2

     After reading the next section of our book I feel like this is one of the most interesting books that I have ever read.  I am learning a lot of new things that I was completely uninformed about.  I thought what Friedman stated about workflow software was interesting and how he states how it is one of the biggest flatteners of all. The ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved. Friedman believes these first three forces have become a crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration. There was an emergence of software protocols, SMTP – simple mail transfer protocol, HTML – the language that enabled anyone to design and publish documents that could be transmitted to and read on any computer anywhere. This is what Friedman called the genesis moment of the flat world. The net result is that people can work with other people on more stuff than ever before. This created a global platform for multiple forms of collaboration.  I completely agree with what Friedman is saying about how Workflow software has changed our world and made me realize how much has changed in such a short amount of time and how easily everyone on earth can be connected in a matter of milliseconds.  An example of this is Microsoft SharePoint where others can look and view what you are writing on the software, my dad using this a lot in his accounting.

     Open sourced software is something that has expanded so much in the past five years.  Some examples that have most impacted many of our lives are Wikipedia and Blogs that each individual can express what they think about any subject matter.  I believe that is community software has made the individual a much bigger part of society and allows everyone who wants to straight their thoughts on a certain subject can speak their mind from the privacy of their homes.

     Friedman argues that outsourcing has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components which can be subcontracted and performed in the most efficient cost-effective way. This process became easier with the mass distribution of fiber optic cable during the introduction of the World Wide Web.  I believe that outsourcing has a good and a bad side.  Outsourcing is taking away from the business that we have here in America.  I realize that we save a lot of money by outsourcing out business to other country’s  but it comes down to a matter of we need to keep our business here where our own people live and to take care of ourselves first.  The fiber optic cables were out of our biggest outsources of all and allowing business from thousands of miles away can be turned into businesses that are next door neighbors to you.

Module 1

Jacob Ready

1/5/2012

IST 1100

Module 1

The difference that I thought were important that Friedman talked about in his book between globalization 1.0 was that countries and governments are the main protagonists. Globalization 1.0 is more the like Cold War and Embargos where as it is a small group in globalization 2.0 there was the boom of the stock market, Wal-Mart, Business go to war with nations. Globalization 3.0 is more of the Web and anyone who wants to be involved can now be.  Globalization 3.0 made the individual much more important part of what happens and now everyone and anyone can be connected at anytime.  Reading this made my mind think how much has changed in my lifetime. It is almost scary to think about what I would do if I didn’t have my cell phone around and how difficult it would be to travel around during the golf season here at Weber State and not be able to communicate with teachers through e-mail and text messages.  Globalization is the increasingly global relationships of culture people and economic activities. Globalization is a huge part of life now and has completely changed the way that business is performed.  The story that most scared me in the book was the McDonalds that were having people ordering their meals from a call center from thousands of miles away.  It amazed me how we are outsourcing at our fast food restaurants in order to save money.  The other form of outsourcing that amazed me as well is how we have  companies that send reports and information to India where people will do all the work that needs to be done in the money be done there and send back while the businessman is sleeping here in the U.S. One of the main points in this book that Friedman thought was very important was the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Friedman called the flattener, “When the walls came down, and the windows came up.” The event not only symbolized the end of the Cold Was it allowed people from the other side of the wall to join the economic mainstream.  He talks about the Berlin Wall coming down and how is the fall of communism and the impact the personal computer had on the ability of individuals to create their own content and connect to one another. At that point the basic platform for the revolution to follow was created: IBM PC, Windows, a standardized graphical interface for word processing, it was a standardized form of communication.  The most important point that that Freidman talked about was when Netscape came out it took the world to a completely different level.  It broadened the audience from the internet from its roots as a communications medium primarily by only early adopters and geeks, to something that made the internet accessible to everyone from five-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. The digitization that took place meant that everyday occurrences such as words, files, films, music, and pictures could be accessed and manipulated on a computer screen bu all people across the world.

In conclusion I think that what the book The World is Flat is very interesting and I am enjoying reading it.  I am learning a lot about how the world has changed in a short amount of time.  Friedman does a very good job of showing how much the world has changed and how the world is now outsourcing to India and many other foreign countries.  Friedman’s interpretations of the events that have occurred I feel are spot on such as the Berlin wall falling and it allowing the world to be free to join the economic mainstream. We are seeing now how the U.S. isn’t just staying within the boundaries of our own country but we are expanding and sharing with other countries.  I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about how we are expanding and how we are all connected.