How is the world like? – The world is flat & Long tail theory

January 10th, 2007 Filed under Books 'n Movies, English entries, Thinking

@ 2007-01-10 20:03

These days I begin to read some books and gaining some thoughts. May I ask you a question – do you know what does the world look like? Yes, you can say a lot abt what is happening from your own experience. Nowadays, we are shopping various goods from the internet, blogging on from the most trivial thing of your own to an event of a worldwide influence, reading scandals abt celebrities dwell at the corner of some place you never heard of. It seems that the www web and the google have enable us to know every things happening in the world – if we want.

But wait, think abt another question – you have knew that our neighbor India has quit a competitive edge in IT field, but do you know what are they doing using the advantage in the process of globalization? Yet, another question is do you know the what kind of opportunists our online behaviors means to some traditional industries, like book and music album distributor?

Before I read the book The World is Flat and Long-tail Theory, the before mentioned two questions can’t be a question to me. The Indians are of course coding software for the developed countries and booksellers can sell books online, even without a real bookshelf. Then I read the two books, I find my understandings are right, but are a distance away from the reality.

The Indians are carrying out lot of outsourcing works from the United States. Some young talented Indian graduates at New Delhi are helping a citizen of USA returning income tax to the USA government when the citizen thought her USA account are handling this. But only God knows where the account is, because he had outsourced the work to young in India and now are on vocation somewhere else. The fact is nowadays, many service works have been outsourced to India, from tax transaction to data mining, from family tutor to call centers. India’s IT technology and language ability have give them the possibility to do this, the lower salary has made American to choose them. The World is Flat gives us an picture of the world from an unprecedented angle.

I have no interest on putting down the answer of the second question, but if you have curiosity on what internet means to booksellers, I recommend you The Long-Tail Theory. It raised a question that are we going to selling less of more if the product tool prevails at individual level and distribution cost lower to an extremely low level.