Chapter 3 Chapter 1 When I'm Sleeping (2)

The next step is the training of those admitted.This includes not only learning how to take and make calls from a company's clients, but also taking "accent correction classes".In accent correction classes, English teachers teach new hires how to cover up their distinct Indian accents and switch to American, Canadian and British accents, depending on who they work with.I sat by and watched the whole process with great interest.The class I attended was teaching how to speak a Middle American dialect, and the students were asked to read a passage over and over again, which was specially designed to train them to soften the "t" sound and learn the retroflex "r".

Their teacher was a young woman who was eight months pregnant and dressed in a traditional Indian sari.Amazingly, she can switch between British, American and Canadian accents with ease.She said: "Remember the first day I taught you Americans how to say 'tuh'? It sounds like 'duh' and you don't have to pronounce it as clearly as the British do. I wouldn't say this: "Betty bought a little butter" or "Put a coin in the phone" (she was speaking with a British accent) we should say "Betty bought a little butter" or "Put a coin in the phone ' (she said it again in American English). I'll read it to you first, and then we'll read it together, okay? 'Thirtylittleturtles in a bottle of bottled water. The little turtles are in a bottle of water, and there are 30 little turtles in a bottle of water. It doesn't matter that each little turtle has to shake a little metal spoon to get a bit of noodles".)

"Okay, who will read first?" the teacher asked.Then the students began to take turns reading this tongue twister with an American accent. Some of them made it right from the start, while others, all I can say is that if they were on call for Delta's lost luggage department, you could definitely tell they weren't in Kansas. After sitting in for half an hour, I asked the teacher if I could give it a try and let the students hear the original accent. I'm from Minnesota with a distinct midwestern accent that sounds like something out of the movie Fargo The characters in are talking.The teacher readily agreed.I started reading that tongue twister: "30 little turtles in a bottle of water..."

The students were very excited to hear it.I didn't expect to be applauded for speaking with a Minnesota accent. You might think it's ridiculous to ask some young people to change their accents in order to compete in this flat world. But before you laugh at it, look at the eagerness of these young people to join the middle class as early as possible in order to gain a foothold in society.If correcting their accent will help them move up the social ladder, so be it, they say. Infosys also has its own call center business. Its chief executive, Neri Carney, said: "It's a very competitive environment. Our call center works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You work during the day, you work at night, Wake up the next morning and go to work. But the pressure they face is not the pressure of alienation, but the pressure of success. They have to face the challenge of success, the challenge of adapting to a high-pressure life, not the challenge of worrying about whether there will be a challenge .”

That’s the feeling I’ve had with many call center operators: Like all other expansions of modernity, outsourcing is challenging traditional models and ways of life.Still, Indians, after so many years of poverty and bureaucracy, are so eager for a change that working extra hours seems tolerable.Also, it is much easier for a well-educated Indian to work hard in Bangalore than to try to start a new life in the US.In this flat world, they could stay in India, get a decent salary by local standards, and not have to live far away from their families, friends and relatives, or adapt to a new culture and diet.As a result, these jobs make them better Indians. Annie, HR Supervisor at 24/7 Call Center.Eunice Krishan said to me: "I took the GMAT exam after I finished my MBA. I could have gone to Purdue University in the United States to study, but I didn't have enough money for tuition at that time, so I had to give up. Now although I have this However, many American companies have entered Bangalore, and they can work in multinational companies in India, so there is no need to go to the United States. Here I can enjoy Indian rice and sambar (a traditional Indian soup), there’s no need to try to get used to coleslaw and frozen beef. Why go to America when you can have Indian food and work in a multinational company?” She owns an apartment and a car in Bangalore, even though The standard of living in the United States is quite good.

If you can walk around a 24/7 call center, you will find that all the computers use the Microsoft operating system, the chips are all from Intel, the phones are from Lucent, and the air conditioners are from Carrier Yes, even the drinking water is Coca-Cola.In addition, 24/7 call center is 90% owned by American investors.As a result, while the US has outsourced some service jobs to India in recent years, US companies' exports to India have risen from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $5 billion in 2003.Some service jobs in the United States moved to India, but India's booming economy created more demand for American goods and services.

Will go again. Nine years ago, when Japanese cars were being exported to the U.S. in large numbers, I wrote a column about what happened while I was playing games on the computer with my 9-year-old daughter Ollie.The name of the game is "Carmen.where is santiago "(Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?) I wanted to remind her that Carmen went to Detroit, so I asked Ollie, "Where are all the cars made?" Unexpectedly, she said, "Japan." oh! I was reminded of this story when I visited GlobalEdge, a software design company in Bangalore, where Rajesh, the manager of the company's marketing department.Rao (RajeshRao) told me that he just called a company in the United States, hoping to win a business opportunity.No sooner had Rao introduced himself as an Indian software company than the American executive on the other end of the line said, "Namaste," a common greeting in Hindi.Rao said: "A few years ago, not many Americans were willing to do business with us, but now they are very enthusiastic." Some even know how to say hello in Hindi.I was thinking that if I had a granddaughter one day and told her I was going to India, she might ask me, "Grandpa, is that where the software is made?"

I think I'll answer her, not quite.Every new product—from software to trinkets—goes through a production cycle, including basic research, applied research, incubation, development testing, production, application, technical support, and subsequent design.Each stage is specialized and unique, India, China and Russia do not have enough manpower and intelligence to solve the entire production process for a large US multinational company, but these countries are constantly improving their R&D capabilities.S. Cherukuri, a researcher at Sarnoff, a research and development company in the United States, said that the innovation industry is going global, and the old production model in which a single multinational company handles the entire production process is gone forever.More and more European and American companies are beginning to outsource R&D to India, Russia and China.

According to the information provided by the state government information technology management department of Karnataka state, where the famous city of Bangalore is located, Cisco Systems, Intel, IBM, Texas Instruments ( Texas Instruments) and the Indian division of General Electric Co (GE) have filed more than 1,000 patent applications with the US Patent Administration.But the Indian division of Texas Instruments has been awarded 225 US patents. "A team at Intel in Bengaluru is developing a microprocessor chip dedicated to high-speed broadband wireless technology, which is scheduled to be launched in the market in 2006," in a statement issued in late 2004 by Karnataka State Director of Information Technology officials said so.He also said, "At General Electric's John F. Welch Technology Center in Bangalore, engineers are developing new aircraft engines, transmission systems and synthetic resins."

In fact, in the past few years, GM has often transferred Indian engineers working for it in the United States back to India to integrate the company's global research work.Now, GM is even sending non-Indian employees to work in Bangalore.Wilfick.Paul (Vivek Paul) is Wipro Technologies (WiproTechnologies) -- another prominent Indian technology company -- but he is based in Silicon Valley to get closer to Wipro Technologies' American customers.Before coming to Wipro, Paul managed General Motors' CATscanner in the Milwaukee (Southeast Harbor City, Wisconsin, USA) area business.At that time, one of his French colleagues was managing General Motors' scanner generator business in France.

"I ran into him on a flight recently," Paul said, "and he told me he had moved to India to run General Motors' high-energy technology research." He, an Indian who used to run General Motors' contrast scanner business in Milwaukee and now manages Wipro Technologies' consulting business in Silicon Valley, told me that his former French colleagues had moved to Bangalore for GM works such a thing.This renders a flat world! Every time I thought I had found the most unlikely job to outsource to Bangalore, I found another even more unlikely.My friend Vivek.Kulkarni used to be a government official in Bangalore responsible for attracting foreign investment. When he stepped down from that position in 2003, he set up a company called B2k. One of the subsidiaries was called Brickwork, which was dedicated to the busy executives of multinational companies. We provide personal administrative assistants for remote services.If you are the president of a company, you have a keynote speech in two days and you need a slide presentation, then Brickwork will do all the research for you, make the slides, and use all the materials in time Emailed to you, never delay your presentation. “When you finish your day in New York, you can assign tasks to your personal administrative assistant on the other side of the world, and by the time you start work the next morning, it’s all in place,” Kulkarni explained. Because of the jet lag, they will be working on your assigned tasks while you are resting at night, and you will receive the completed work the next morning. "Kulkarni also suggested that I hire a remote assistant in India to assist me with my research for this book," and he or she could help you with all sorts of tidying up, and when you wake up, you'll find the Finished summary". I told her that no one would be better than my longtime working assistant Maya. Gehrman was a better fit for me, and she was sitting 10 feet away from me. The cost of hiring this remote personal administrative assistant ranges from $1,500 to $2,000 per month. Brickwork generally looks for candidates from graduates of Indian universities.There are so many good college graduates in India, you can definitely hire good people.As stated in Brickwork's introduction materials, "India has as many as 2.5 million college graduates every year. Indian business schools train 89,000 MBA graduates every year. In addition, there are more capable housewives entering Labor market. India's huge talent pool can provide multinational companies with a variety of high-quality talents." "The feedback we've had has been great," Kulkarni said. Brickwork's client base can be broken down into two broad categories: one is U.S.-based healthcare consultancies, which often crunch a lot of data and prepare presentations in the form of slides and American investment banks and financial services firms, which need fancy brochures with diagrams explaining the benefits of initial public offerings or mergers and acquisitions.Taking M&A reports as an example, Brickwork will help them prepare reports related to the overall market environment and trends. This part of the content is easy to obtain information from the Internet, and the format is basically standardized."The investment banks determine the right price for these deals," Kulkarni said. "We're doing low-end work, and the things that require a lot of judgment and experience will be done by them." The more, the more knowledge they gain.Kulkarni said: "Our philosophy is to keep learning. You are constantly challenged. There is no end to learning...and there is no end to who can do what. " Unlike Columbus, my discovery of Bangalore in India didn't stop me from "flat world" exploration.After returning to the United States from India, I decided to continue to the East to find examples.Shortly thereafter, I was in Tokyo and had the good fortune to meet the legendary Kenichi Ohmae, who had been a consultant at McKinsey Japan.Now Kenichi Ohmae has his own company.what to do?No more consultations.He said he was outsourcing low-skill Japanese jobs to call centers and service providers in China.I asked in amazement: "Outsourcing to China? Didn't the Japanese invade China for nearly 50 years, and the Chinese still hate the Japanese?" Kenichi Ohmae did not deny this, but he also pointed out that there are still many Chinese who can speak Japanese in Northeast China, where there are many traces of Japanese culture, such as sushi and karaoke. Dalian, a port city in Northeast China, is a very Obvious example.Dalian is to Japan what Bangalore is to the US and other English-speaking countries: it has become an outsourcing hub.The Chinese may never forgive Japan for the disasters Japan brought to China in the 20th century, but now the Chinese are more concerned about how to lead the global economy in the 21st century, so they are willing to work hard to improve their Japanese and undertake all the work outsourced by Japan. Kenichi Ohmae told me at the beginning of 2004: "It is very easy to recruit employees in Dalian. About 1/3 of the people around Dalian have learned Japanese in high school, so many Japanese companies are willing to come here." Kenichi Ohmae's company outsourced It is mainly data entry work. They scan, fax or e-mail handwritten Japanese documents from Japan to Dalian, and local employees enter these materials into the database in Japanese.His company has developed a software program that divides the data that needs to be entered into different parts, so that it can be assigned to employees in Japan or China according to their specialties. Finally, the database is rearranged at the headquarters in Tokyo.Kenichi Ohmae's company has even signed such employment contracts with more than 70,000 housewives, some of whom are familiar with medicine and law, and can complete these tasks at home.The firm has also recently expanded its services to computer-aided design in real estate.Kenichi Ohmae said: "When Japanese construction companies discuss design plans with customers, most of them draw plane sketches on paper. Many Japanese housing design companies do not use computers." These hand-drawn design drawings are first sent to In China, it is converted into a digital version and then sent back to the Japanese construction company, and finally forms the architectural blueprint.Kenichi Ohmae said: "We hired the best data operators in China, and they can process 70 such house design drawings a day." Seventy years ago, the brutal Japanese army occupied most of China and destroyed countless Chinese houses. 70 years later, the Chinese are making electronic versions of house plans for Japanese families: Maybe there is still hope for this flat world... I wanted to see for myself this Chinese Bangalore - Dalian, so I continued eastward.Dalian is impressive, and not just because it's a Chinese city.There are wide boulevards, beautiful green belts, numerous scientific research institutions and vast software parks, which are no less than "Silicon Valley". I had been to Dalian in 1999, but when I revisited the old place this time, I almost could not recognize this place, because too many new buildings have been added here. Dalian, about an hour's flight from Beijing, epitomizes many of China's modern cities—though of course there are still many other backward and declining cities in China.Many Chinese cities are on the rise, striving for knowledge-intensive business opportunities, not just large-scale manufacturing.The signs on the buildings in Dalian confirm this: General Electric, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, HP, Sony and Accenture.The background support work and software research and development work of these multinational companies in Asia are all done here. Dalian's geographical location is very superior, only one hour's flight from South Korea and Japan.In addition, it has a large number of talents proficient in Japanese, broadband Internet is very popular, there are many parks and a world-class golf course, all of which make it an outsourcing market favored by Japanese companies.For the salary of one software engineer hired by a Japanese company in Dalian, in addition to three software engineers, a Japanese company can also hire a roomful of call center operators (the starting salary for one month is 90 US dollars).It is not difficult to explain why about 2,800 Japanese companies choose Dalian as their location. Dalian Huaxin Computer Technology Co., Ltd. (DHC for short) is one of the largest local software companies.Liu Jun, the general manager of the company, told me: "I brought many American friends to Dalian, and they were amazed at the speed of China's high-tech development. Confidence in our capabilities.” Within six years, the software company had grown from 30 employees to 1,200. The 49-year-old mayor of Dalian, Xia Deren, is an energetic former president of a university (China has a long-standing cultural tradition of meritocracy when it comes to promoting talents and recommending talents).During a banquet, Mayor Xia Deren described to me his grand plan and current progress.He introduced: "There are 22 colleges and universities in Dalian, with a total of 200,000 college students." More than half of the students are engineering or science students. Even those liberal arts students who study history or literature have a year to study Japanese or Japanese. English, and be able to use computers proficiently, only in this way will they have good employment prospects.More than half of Dalian citizens can access the Internet in their offices, homes or schools. Mayor Xia also said: "Initially Japanese companies only did some simple processing industries in Dalian, and gradually they began to transfer their R&D and software development industries here. In the past one or two years, American software companies have also begun to transfer their software industries Outsourcing to Dalian. We will gradually catch up with India. Dalian's software product exports are increasing at a rate of 50% every year. China is becoming the country with the largest number of university graduates.Although in general Chinese are not as good at English as India, but because we have a larger population, we can pick out the brightest and best English students. "So far, the Japanese government has never formally apologized to China for the crimes committed in China during the Second World War. Will the people of Dalian be willing to work for the Japanese? Mayor Xia Deren said:" We will never forget Japan The history of the invasion of China, but in the economic field we will only focus on economic issues, especially when it comes to software outsourcing business.If American and Japanese companies choose to build factories in Dalian, we think that is a good thing.Our younger generation is working hard to learn Japanese, and with this tool, they will be able to compete with their Japanese counterparts and secure high-paying jobs for themselves.Personally, I feel that Chinese young people have become more ambitious in recent years than their peers in the US and Japan, but they are not yet comparable to my generation.Our generation has to go to remote areas to exercise before going to college, go to the countryside, factories and the army, and experience the hard work of life.So our generation has more willpower than the younger generation. "Mayor Xia's views on the world are direct and vivid. Although the translation may have missed some of his views, he has indeed seen the changes in the world, and Americans should see this too." The Communist Party official explained to me : "The rule of the market economy is that if a certain place has the most abundant human resources and the cheapest labor, enterprises and business opportunities from all over the world will come here.In manufacturing, the Chinese were initially employees, working for foreign manufacturers, and after a few years, we learned all the production processes, and we started our own companies.The same goes for the software industry.It's like building a building. Today, you Americans are designers and engineers, and developing countries are just masons. But I hope that one day we will also be architects. " I continue eastward. In the summer of 2004 I was on vacation in Colorado.Before that, I had heard about an airline called JetBlue, which was founded in 1999 to provide cheap air tickets.But I don't know their route, I need to take a flight from Washington to Atlanta, but I don't know the flight time, so I call them.To be honest, I called them for another reason: I wanted to confirm that JetBlue had reportedly outsourced its entire flight bookings to Utah housewives.So I called JetBlue's reservations line: "Hi, I'm Dolly. Can I help?" Sounds like this is someone who's already a grandmother. I asked, "I want to go from Washington to Atlanta. Do you fly this route?" Dolly replied, "Sorry, we only have flights from Washington to Fort Lauderdale." I continued, "What about from Washington to New York?" Dolly responded, "I'm sorry, we don't fly that route either. But we do fly from Washington to Oakland and Long Beach." "Can I ask you something else? Are you home right now? I heard JetBlue employees are working from home.” I asked tentatively. Dolly happily replied, "Yes, I'm at home." (I later found out from JetBlue that her full name was Dolly Baker.) "I'm sitting in our room on the second floor of our house and I can see scenery. Someone called me 5 minutes ago with the same question and they said, 'Oh my God, I thought you were going to tell me you were in New Delhi. '" Following her words, I asked, "Then where do you live?" Dolly said happily: "Salt Lake City, Utah. We have a two-story building. I like working here, especially in the snowy winter. I can also work comfortably at home." "How did you get this job?" I asked. "They don't advertise, I was told by word of mouth," she said. "I worked in state government for a while, and when I retired I thought I should do something else. I love my job." David.David Neeleman is the founder and CEO of JetBlue.He calls this type of hiring "homesourcing."JetBlue now has 400 employees like Dolly who work from home in the Salt Lake City area, booking airline tickets without missing out on babysitting, exercising, writing novels and cooking. A few months later, I visited Neeleman at JetBlue's New York headquarters, and he explained the benefits of Home Bags to me. In fact, he started the practice while working at Morris Airways (later acquired by Southwest Airlines). Neeleman said: "Morris Airlines has a total of 250 such employees. Because of their higher work enthusiasm and better service attitude, the workload completed is 30% higher than that of non-"home bag" employees. Therefore When I started JetBlue, I said, 'We're going to do all the bookings for these housewives." Neeleman also had personal reasons for doing so.As a Mormon, he believed society would be better off if more mothers could stay home with their children and hold a paid job.So he will "home bag" The location was chosen in Salt Lake City, where there are many Mormon women, many of whom are housewives. These people work 25 hours a week and spend four hours a month at JetBlue's regional branch in Salt Lake City for training to stay abreast of the company's latest developments. Neeleman also said: "We will not outsource to India. Here we can get a higher quality of service... Some companies are willing to outsource to India, I still can't understand.Probably because they always wanted someone to sit in front of them, or put some boss in charge.The high efficiency we have achieved here has far exceeded the difference between local wages and low wages in India. "A Los Angeles Times article on JetBlue on May 9, 2004 states: "In 1997, 11.6 million U.S. corporate employees worked from home part-time; That has risen to 23.5 million, which equates to 16% of the U.S. workforce, while the number of freelancers who primarily work from home has also risen from 18 million to 23.4 million.In the eyes of some people, home-sourcing and outsourcing are not different strategies, they are both different forms of realization of the same purpose: where the cost can be reduced and efficiency can be improved, the company will go there. " This is also what I have seen and heard: the home package in Salt Lake City and the outsourcing in Bangalore are two sides of the same coin: it is not outsourcing the business.The new thing I've learned is that companies and individuals can contract work almost anywhere. I continued eastward until I reached Iraq. In the fall of 2004, I accompanied Richard, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States.General Richard Myers inspects hot spots in Iraq.We went to Baghdad, then to the U.S. headquarters in Fallujah and to the camp of the Marine Expeditionary Unit 24 (MEU24) on the outskirts of Babylon province, the center of the so-called Sunni triangle. MEU24's camp is a bit like an Apache (Fort Apache, in the second half of the 19th century, the Native American Apache tribe strongly resisted the colonists' invasion of their territory - Translator's Note), surrounded by hostile Iraqi Sunnis Muslim.While General Miles was busy meeting with officers and soldiers, I had to walk around the barracks, and finally walked into the combat command center. I was immediately attracted by the huge flat-screen TV in the command center.The content shown on the TV screen appears to be coming from an overhead projection TV unit.The screen shows a group of people moving behind a house, while the scrolling dialogue on the right side of the screen appears to be a discussion of television images. "What's this showing?" I asked the soldier next to me, who was carefully monitoring all the images on his laptop. He explained that it was the U.S. Predator drone that was filming Iraqi villages with high-performance television cameras and sending real-time pictures back to his computer and to this screen.The drones and cameras are manned by experts at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada.Indeed, the drones flying over Iraq were controlled by Las Vegas. These video images were simultaneously viewed by MEU24, US Central Command in Tampa, US Central Command's regional headquarters in Qatar, the Pentagon, and even the CIA.These analysts around the world are also exchanging views on TV content online, and the transcript of their online conversations flashes on the right side of the screen. Before I could express my astonishment, an officer who was with me said that this technology had "flattened" the hierarchy in the military.Junior officers and even enlisted soldiers have a wealth of information at their disposal, and they can operate computers and make decisions about the information they gather.Of course, a lieutenant cannot order to fire without the instructions of his superiors, but the era when only senior officers can know the whole situation is over.Soldiers' battlefields were also razed to the ground.I told this story to my friend Nick.Burns (Nick Bums), he was the US ambassador to NATO at the time, and he was also a loyal fan of the American baseball team Red Sox (RedSox).Nick told me that in April 2004 he attended a meeting at the U.S. Central Command’s regional headquarters in Qatar, and John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, The general sat across from him, and behind him were four flat-screen TVs.The first 3 shows are "The Predator" The drones were taking live images from various locations in Iraq, and Nick focused on the last one, which showed a Red Sox-Yankees baseball game. The hamburger and fries flattened too so I continued east, all the way back to my home in Bethesda, MD.When I finally sat down in the room, I felt my head spin.However, various news that can verify the "flat world" have reached my ears one after another.Some news might leave parents with college-age kids wondering how their kids are going to cope: For example, Forrester Research Inc. Forecasts say that by 2015 more than 3 million service and professional jobs in the United States will be outsourced abroad.What surprised me the most was the front page article "Want Outsourced French Fries" in the American "International Herald Tribune" on July 19, 2004? "... There is a McDonald's near Interstate 55 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where you can get good, efficient service, even though the person who ordered your food isn't in the restaurant, or even in Missouri State.In fact, it is a call center in Colorado, which is 1450 kilometers away from the restaurant.The call center transmits the customer's order to the chef who prepares the food through a high-speed network.It seems that even visiting service work cannot be ruled out as being outsourced. Shannon Davis, owner of McDonald's restaurants in Point Girardeau, owns 12 McDonald's franchises, outsourced ordering for four of them to the Colorado call center.The latter is owned by another McDonald's franchisee, Steven Bigari.Davis does this for the same reasons as any businessman looking to outsource: to reduce costs, increase speed and reduce errors. Cheap, fast, and reliable lines of communication made it easy for Colorado call center workers to talk to Missouri customers, take an electronic snapshot of them, display their order on a screen to confirm that nothing went wrong, and send Orders and photos sent to restaurant kitchens in Missouri.Once the order was picked up, the photos were destroyed, Bigari said.And the person who picks up the burger may never know that their order traveled across two states before they left to order it. Davis said, I dreamed of doing this 10 years ago, so I put it into practice as soon as I got the opportunity.Bigari is more than happy to help Davis realize his dreams, and his call center charges a modest fee...   The article also mentioned that McDonald's has also noticed this innovation in outsourcing operations. It began to experiment with three branches near its corporate headquarters in Illinois, but the software used was different from Bigari's (Bigari). Jim, vice president of information technology at McDonald's.Sappington (Jim Sappington) said that it is still a very distant thing to apply this outsourcing business to McDonald's 13,000 restaurants in the United States. However, in addition to Davis, two other McDonald's franchisees in Minnesota and Massachusetts have also outsourced their ordering operations to Bigari.Bigari believes a key factor in the system's success is that he's linking a customer's photo to an order, improving accuracy, speeding up service and reducing complaints.The article concludes: "In fast food, time really is money. Even 5 seconds off a workflow is a big deal." It takes more than 30 seconds to pick up the meal, and now it only takes 1 minute and 5 seconds, which is more than half the time of 2 minutes and 36 seconds in ordinary McDonald's restaurants.There are as many as 260 vehicles passing by their meal pick-up window per hour, an increase of more than 30 vehicles than before the start of the call center business... Although the average salary of call center operators is 40 cents more per hour than ordinary telephone employees, But overall, the cost of his wages fell 1 percent, while restaurant sales rose sharply.经过其他公司的测试，在比加里开始呼叫中心业务之后，其窗口取餐业务的差错率还不到所有订单的2%，而在此之前，这一比例为4%.事实上，尽管比加里掌管的其中7家麦当劳店除了提供呼叫中心订餐服务外，也有柜台服务，但多数顾客即使是坐在就餐区内也宁愿通过呼叫中心订餐，他们用手机订餐，用信用卡支付。 我继续东行，到了我家朝东的起居室。我的妻子安（Ann），曾经是一年级的阅读老师，她给我看了一篇文章，里面谈到美国的家长和孩子正通过网络将家庭辅导外包给印度人。2005年10月美联社发自印度Cochin的一份报道讲述了这个故事：黎明尚未到来。天色如墨，几颗稀疏的星星在天上闪烁。住在印度南部科钦的科扬卜罗斯〃纳米多来到了一个安静的郊区，开始了她的工作。现在是凌晨4：30.她端着一杯咖啡，坐在自己的小隔间里面开始工作。她有20多位同事，每个人都有一个小隔间，里面放着电脑和耳机。在7000英里（1英里=1.609千米） 之外的芝加哥郊区小镇格伦沃（Glenview），夜幕刚刚降临。一个14岁的男孩普林斯顿〃约翰坐在电脑边，光着脚丫，等待着上他的几何辅导课。这个中学一年级的小男孩戴上了一副耳机，点开电脑上的软件，就可以和他远在天边的辅导老师纳米多通话。 这被称为电子辅导（e-tutoring）。这又是一个活生生的例子。现在的通信设施，加上人数众多的受过高等教育、工资低廉的亚洲人已经把外包的领域不断扩展，渗透到美国人的日常生活。上千名美国的中学生现在都在接受印度人的辅导。 纳米多问：。你好，普林斯顿，怎么样，你考得怎么样？ . 普林斯顿回答：。喂，我很好。我考得很不错…… 纳米多为一家叫做成长之星（GrowingStar）的公司工作。这家公司在加利福尼亚的弗里蒙特和印度的科钦均有办公。普林斯顿和他12岁的妹妹普丽西拉每周两次通过网络接受数学辅导。 普林斯顿的辅导课很快开始了。一份几何试卷出现在他的电脑屏幕上。辅导老师和学生互相交谈，打字输入有关的信息，并用一个数字化的。pencil.做习题、改错误。普林斯顿在一个很像鼠标垫的板子上写字，他写的东西就出现在纳米多的电脑屏幕上。普林斯顿还可以用扫描仪将他课本上老师布臵了作业的那几页发送给纳米多。普林斯顿说，。let us start.于是他们开始讲解什么是平行线和补角。 电子辅导是在3年前出现的。现在有数千名印度老师在辅导美国学生数学、科学和英语。 她们的工资是每小时15~20美元，而在美国请一个家教需要付每小时40~100美元。普林斯顿的母亲贝西〃皮尤斯坦非常满意，她说她的孩子们两年前开始接受电子辅导，现在每门功课都是A或B.辅导课快结束了。纳米多布臵了课后作业。 普林斯顿抗议了：。又有作业呀。好吧，好吧，做作业。没有作业的生活该有多好啊…… 尽管我已经到家了，但是我还是继续向东。我到了华盛顿的市中心，就在我办公室的旁边。2005年秋天的一个下午我采访了美国商务代表罗伯。波特曼（RobPortman） 大使。他的助手埃米。M.威尔金森（AmyM.Wilkinson），一个白宫工作人员，告诉了我一个不同寻常的故事。美国和阿曼刚刚完成自由贸易协定谈判，双方同意消除关税和贸易壁垒。不同寻常的是，波特曼是通过电视会议的方式和阿曼商业和工业部长迈克博勒。宾。阿里。素丹（MaqboolBinAliSultan）签订的这个协议。伯特曼在美国，而素丹是在阿曼的首都马斯喀特（Muscat）。威尔金森女士描述了当时的情景：“在我们的会议室有大约30名媒体记者，个个拿着笔记本电脑。波特曼大使站在房间前面的讲台上。他的形象被投影在一个数字化的电视会议屏幕的半边。阿曼商业工业部部长和围坐在圆桌边的阿曼记者们被投影到屏幕的另外一半。波特曼大使先讲话。阿曼部长接着讲话。然后是回答问题的时间。美国的媒体向波特曼提问。然后一个美国记者同时向波特曼大使和迈克博勒。宾。阿里。素丹部长提问。接着，美国记者纷纷向阿曼部长提问，阿曼记者也向美国大使提问。最后，（在屏幕一边的）波特曼伸出手和阿曼部长'虚拟握手'。这看起来挺滑稽，有人忍不住笑出声了。不过效果确实不错。这种会议能够让更多的人参加，否则我们必须整个使团飞到那边去，阿曼方面也是一样。 数字化的会议室的每个人都不会筋疲力尽，而且坐在'虚拟桌子'边上的每个人都皆大欢喜。 " 我在美国还遇到一些可以说明世界变平的例子，不过和经济学没有关系，但却和我的职业有关。2004年大选之前，我参加了哥伦比亚广播公司王牌主持人鲍勃。希弗主持的周日早间新闻节目《面对国家》（FacetheNation）。那几周哥伦比亚广播公司在各大媒体上都受到关注，因为拉瑟（DanRather）在名气很大的《60分钟》节目中报道说，越战期间布什总统的空军服役证明是伪造的。 节目之后，西弗给我讲述了一周前他遇到的奇事：那天他录完节目走出直播间时，一个年轻的记者在路边等他。这并不奇怪，因为各主流媒体——哥伦比亚广播公司、国家广播公司、美国广播、福克斯和CNN——周日早间都会有访谈节目，他们会派记者到其他媒体直播间门口等待节目结束后采访出席访谈的嘉宾。 但是这个年轻人并不是这些主流媒体派来的，他很礼貌地介绍自己是一个网站InDcJournal.com的记者，希望能问希弗几个问题。出于礼貌，希弗表示同意。这位年轻人就用一个希弗不认识的设备开始了采访录音，紧接着他又表示希望能拍张照片，可是希弗并没有看到他带的照相机——他根本不需要专门的照相机，一部手机就帮他解决了问题。 “第二天早上我登陆了他们的网站，不仅看到了一篇报道、我的照片，还发现已经有了300篇相关评论。”尽管希弗对这种网络媒体的迅速发展并不少见多怪，但他仍旧对这位年轻人如此高效率、低成本的独行侠式的报道方式感到吃惊。 我对这个故事产生了很大兴趣，于是我联系上了这位年轻人，他名叫比尔。 阿尔多利诺，是一个很善于思考的年轻人。我在网上对他进行了采访，首先从他用的设备问起。 “我用一个很小的MP3播放器兼数字录音笔（长3.5英寸，宽2英寸，1英寸=2.54厘米）进行录音，用一个单独的小数码相机拍照，这些当然比不上融数码相机和录音笔于一体的手机方便。我一直随身携带这些设备，因为你随时都会遇到新闻。” 阿尔多利诺说，这个MP3播放器花了他125美元，主要功能是播放音乐，也可以当作录音设备，将声音存成WAV格式，然后可以在电脑上播放.基本上，采访必备的录音设备只需要大约100美元，如果你工作中还需要图片，那就再花200~300美元买个照相机，400~500美元就能买一个很好的录音笔兼数码相机。 但是要想做采访工作，花200美元添置设备已经足够了。 是什么让他创立了自己的新闻网呢？ 阿尔多利诺说：“我已经厌烦了主流媒体那种片面、独断的信息采集方式。” 阿尔多利诺自称是“中间偏右的自由主义者”。他说：“独立采编和博客都是市场力量的反映，因为现在的信息来源无法满足人们的需求。我最早的独立采访对象是华盛顿特区的反战团体，事实上很多媒体都没有正确地反映这些社会团体的性质。我采编的新闻由于观点新颖、视角独特而得到迅速传播。对希弗的采访在24小时内点击次数达5.5万次，那是我对'拉瑟门事件'的披露.我当时采访了第一位对丹。拉瑟的报道质疑的专家，没想到48小时内《华盛顿邮报》、《芝加哥太阳时报》、《纽约时报》等都要求对他进行采访。” 他继续说：“发现哥伦比亚广播公司造假的过程是非常快的。很多人都在不屈不挠地寻找事实。媒介的传播速度和开放性让哥伦比亚广播公司难以应付无数无形中存在的新闻监督员……我总是想以写作为生，但很讨厌美联社的那种写作风格。博客的存在让人们不必对着电视大叫大嚷，让他们有了畅所欲言的机会。 我觉得博客实际在充当新闻采编和评论的供给系统，他们一方面在密切关心主流媒体的动态，另一方面也在给后者提供基本信息。就像你在本书中谈到的很多情况一样，事情都有好坏两面。 多家媒体的存在可能会导致新闻报道不一致的情况，但它也打破了垄断，更好地确保了公众获得信息的真实性。“就像我很偶然地听到希弗和阿尔多利诺的故事一样，也许你也会在某一天遇到一些事情，他们会告诉你，旧的等级制度正被碾平，世界也在变平。我翻阅着2005年6月25日的《金融时报》，忽然看到这则新闻《Google寻找更多的天才》。 这则报道写的是Google打算把传奇的技术天才路易斯。蒙尼尔（LouisMonier）从eBay挖过来。 蒙尼尔在eBay负责新技术开发。真正吸引我的是报道中的一段话：“蒙尼尔先生最初是在一封电子邮件中把打算离开eBay的想法告诉了博客约翰。贝特尔，贝特尔很快就在他的网站Battellemedia.com上公布了这一新闻。”也就是说，一个顶尖的博客公布了这一消息，而传统的媒体巨人《金融时报》不得不引用贝特尔一个人的网站作为最权威的信息来源。 研究政治和技术的相互关系的专家迈卡。希福莱（MicahL.Sifry）在2004年11月22日的《国家》“自上而下的政治一去不复返了。过去，（TheNation） 杂志中提到：竞选、机构和新闻界都是依靠大资本支撑的与世隔绝的权力中心，但是现在和旧制度不同，出现了很多能够让个体更疯狂、更能亲身参与、更能直接满意的东西。 " 阿尔多利诺和《金融时报》上的报道只不过是两个例子。世界正在以更快的速度变平，并且在改变各种规则、角色以及相互的关系，而社会科学还没有对此作出足够的研究。就像我要在下一章中谈到的那样，我们将进入一个阶段，让我们可以看到几乎一切事物都能数字化、虚拟化和自动化，那些采用新科技手段的国家、公司和个人将获得惊人的收益。我们将进入一个阶段，让更多的人可以接触到这些科技手段，他们可以是创造者、合作者甚至是恐怖分子。真正的信息变革即将开始，我称其为全球化3.0版本，但我相信这个全球化的新时代与前两个全球化的版本存在着质的差异，所以我强调世界已经从圆的变成了平的。不管你在地球的什么地方，你都会发现，等级制度正遭到来自社会底层的挑战，或者正从自上而下的关系变成更为平等和合作的关系。 曾担任克林顿政府商务部高级官员、现为私人战略咨询室的大卫。罗特科普夫表示：“全球化曾是我们用来描述政府和大企业关系变化的词汇，但现在我们看到的是意义更广阔也更为深远的现象。”全球化并不仅仅是政府、企业和个人相互交流的方式，也不仅仅是机构间相互影响的方式，它意味着新的社会、政治和商业模式的出现。 罗特科普夫补充道：“全球化涉及社会的最根深蒂固的方面，甚至会影响到社会契约。 你所在的政治实体中存在着那些在虚拟空间的新工作，存在着能参与全球分工合作的工人，存在着在世界多个地方同时生产的产品，谁来监管工作？谁来征税？谁从税收中获益？ 如果我对平坦世界的说法是正确的，那么这将像古滕堡（Gutenberg）印刷术、民族国家的兴起和工业革命的发生那样被当作全球最基本的变革之一。就像罗特科普夫提到的那样，每次变革都会影响个人角色、政府角色和形式、创新方式、妇女地位、战争方式、受教育方式、宗教和艺术的表达方式、科学研究地开展方式等。“历史上总有一些分水岭式的事件，他们带来的变革是彻底的、多层面的，他们的意义在当时也是很难预测的”。 如果平坦世界的前景让你对未来感到不适，你的感觉没有错，很多人和你的感受是一样的。历史上的每次技术变革都给这个世界带来了深刻的变化，但是世界变平的过程和以往的变革有着质的不同。印刷术的引进用了数十年的时间，而且在更长的一段时间内，这种新技术之影响到地球上很少一部分人。工业革命也是这样。世界变平的过程比前两次全球化发生的速度更快，影响的人也更多。转变的过程速度越快、范围越广、带来的破坏就可能越大，因为权力从旧主人转移到新主人手中的过程是无序的。 过去数年一些无法利用这些变化而在市场上遭受失败的高科技公司给所有的企业、机构和国家敲响了警钟：它们现在面对着无法回避甚至无法预测的挑战，但是却缺乏适应这些挑战所必需的领导、灵活性和想象力。不是因为它们没有意识到这些问题，也不是因为它们不够精明，而是因为变化的速度超过了它们。 我们这个时代面临的巨大挑战是如何让人们不要受制于这些变化，如何让人们不落后于这些变化。这些都不容易实现，但这却是我们的任务。This is inevitable.本书就是要提供这样一个思考问题的框架，并且让我们最大限度地从中受益。 在本章中，我介绍了我是怎么发现世界在变平的。下一章中我将讨论世界是怎样变平的。