260-400 "The World is Flat" The Ever Continuing Economy

1) What is free trade? Do you personally think free trade is important? Why or why not?

Free trade is essentially and open market across the globe.  This means there are little to no restrictions on imports and exports around the world.  Some governments will still include tariffs or taxes, to imported or exported goods, but essentially you are free to buy are sell to anyone in the world.  When it comes to if it is important there are two points of view.  One says that the global economy does better when we are free to trade amongst one another without government regulation.  The other point of view says that with so many countries emerging into the global economy it cannot self sustain itself due to the variation in cost of living and manufacturing.  I happen to side on the point of view that the world economy works best without regulation.  I think this because it is currently working just fine and once restrictions get put on the market it typically hurts the market share.

2) What skills and personality traits make a "new middler?"

First I will give background on what a new middler even is.  Now that the world is becoming more automatized and digital, a lot of middle class jobs are now being fulfilled by electronics.  Thus creating the new middler’s, which must adapt to this more technological world.  New middler’s must become familiar with technology now that, most jobs are going into this category.  These jobs take a lot of patience and fewness, so a new middler must have an open mind and be willing to learn.  Which I fully believe is necessary in this new world.

3) What is CQ + PQ > IQ? And why is it important?

What Friedman is arguing is that CQ or Curiosity Quotient and PQ or Passion Quotient is more important that Intelligence Quotient.  With the world changing so quickly now days, it is more important to be willing to learn then to hold on to your past knowledge.  You’ll always have to keep continuing your intelligence with each continuation of technology.  This is of course very true, but it also helps to have smart people doing smart work.

200-259 "The World Is Flat" Triple Convergence and Intellectual Freedom

1) What is the Triple Convergence and why is it important?

 Convergence 1: Is basically that the Internet has allowed us to connect to one another to share our work, ideas and knowledge, regardless of distance between one another.

Convergence 2: States that walls or ceilings no longer bind companies, employees can be utilized from all different locations across the globe based on the needs of the company.

Convergence 3: Describes the world as a global competition, anyone in the world can technically do each other’s job.  We are no longer bound to occupations or work that is in our geographic area.

This is an important idea because it gives connects the world in a multitude of ways.  It tells us that no longer where we are living we can work, and do what we want to do or connect to whomever because geography is becoming less of a restricted element.

 2) In the story about India and Indiana, who is the exploiter and who is the exploited party?

 The story between the two is definitely a cluster of conflicts.  On one hand you have Indiana who is looking to upgrade their technology and become more advanced and on the other hand you have India who is looking to make a profit and help advance the world.  When it comes to who is the exploiter and who is the exploited I find it kind of difficult but in the end it seems one slightly exceeds the other for each title.  In my opinion I believe that Indiana is the exploited party.  My conclusion is based on the fact that even though Indiana didn’t get their technology they still had to pay a hefty amount of money for work they didn’t really get.  I mean I believe they needed to pay for the work of those employees but not at the sum total they paid.  As for India, I think they are the exploiter because they were looking to make a profit and they undercut everyone else just to seal the deal and didn’t fully deliver and still expected a hefty payment for incomplete work.

 3) What is intellectual property and why is it important?

 Intellectual property is a series of “laws” that give credit to people for their knowledge and work but still allow it to be available for use by other individuals.  It protects those who were the creator and gives them the proper credit.  However, by giving credit where it is due, it also helps other people utilize the knowledge.  It’s important because the creators deserve the credit for the work that they do, but it’s also cool to be able to utilize the work and knowledge for other projects or work.  

Job Interview "Electrical Engineer"

Electrical Engineer

Research:

Definition for an Electrical Engineer:

Works in a branch of engineering that deals with the practical application of electricity especially as related to communications, the distribution of power, and the design and operation of machinery and equipment.

This occupation typically involves the creation of circuits for computers, lights, screens and all other modern technology to even be what it is.  The reason I picked this field of study is that it doesn’t get more computer or tech savvy then this.

This occupation is growing at a substantial rate with the growth and knowledge we gain by creating and studying technology and electronics.  Electronics have become apart of modern day life and often gets overlooked.  I mean when you think of a circuit you think of power going into a switch going into a load, such as a light bulb then into a grounding source.  An electrical engineer makes thousands of circuits on one microchip and has to figure out and decide when and where that power has to travel and split to make the creation work the way it needs to.

It takes a whole lot of math and will power to design these circuits, and that was just one field an electrical engineer can venture.  Another field is coding and software.  Once you get the device built and to simply power on, what now?  An electrical engineer must then create a code of on and off to make the thing “talk”.  Its crazy to think all your smartphone knows is 1-On and 0-Off, This language is known as Binary, it is like knowing another language if you can figure this out. 

Interview:

Company: Quantronix Inc.

Job Title: Electrical Engineer

Job Holder: Brandon Taylor

Me: What made you seek a career in engineering?

Brandon: As a kid I had fun taking things apart and figuring out how to put them back together.  This career is almost like that.

Me: What does your job consist of?

Brandon: I design different weighing and dimension systems for distribution companies.  I do both the hardware and software or in other words I build the thing and teach it how to talk.

Me: What is the hardest part of your job?

Brandon: Teaching the thing to speak, there are always brain blocks in the hardware so fixing and getting them to talk the way you’d like them to is the most difficult part of my job.

Me: What is the best part of your job?

Brandon: I love every part of my job but probably getting the thing built and talking, or pretty much seeing it work how I had envisioned is the best and most rewarding part of my job.

Me: Last question, what would you recommend to anyone seeking a career in this field?

Brandon: Don’t let the math get you down, why you use a lot of math in this career you learn it so much more easily by doing this stuff.  It almost becomes second nature once you get seasoned.

136-199 "The World Is Flat" Offshoring and Modern Business

1)    What is offshoring and how is that different from outsourcing?

Offshoring is when a company moves a department or the whole company outside of its origin.  A typical example is a lot of United States based companies setup their manufacturing in another country such as China.  They do this to save money on the labor and the taxes in many cases.  The difference between this and outsourcing is that it is still apart of your company; you aren’t having another company do the work for your company.

2)    What is a supply chain and how to Wal-Mart use their supply chain to their advantage?

A supply chain is a basically a large distribution of goods, or a sequence of production.  Wal-Mart is a huge corporation; one way that they can do that uses a supply chain to their advantage is always having a location readily available for consumers to come purchase goods.  This is a huge advantage to Wal-Mart, having the physical location for many consumers to go to.  One advantage to that alone is the fact that many other companies use goods from Wal-Mart.  The best example I can give for this is restaurants.  Wal-Mart owns Sam’s Club, which is a place where many restaurants go to purchase groceries, and other commodities such as plates and silverware.  Wal-Mart essentially being convenient for people to go to makes a huge difference in the buying world.

3)    How has Google affected businesses?

Google has both its benefits and downfalls to businesses.  I will start with the upside.  With being so well known and used, if a business can get their name put on Google to come up readily in a search, that brings in a lot of business.  The other benefit is it helps people not go to large corporations and go to the little guy’s cause you can look up whatever good, or service you need and typically you’ll see a little business nearby to you that it’d be nice to support.

Now for a downside, Google brings up businesses close and far, typically if somebody can save a little bit of money buy purchasing online they are going to do it, bypassing a lot of companies for dollars.  It makes the world a much more competitive place when you can literally save hundreds or cents on the same product or service.

77-136 "The World is Flat" Software and Outsourcing

1) What is workflow software?

Friedman describes workflow software as a discreet revolution that was happening during the mid 90’s. The software aloud more people to collaborate within a company and between other companies throughout the world, faster than before. This was made possible by the rise of web standards that in essence made it so that all computers spoke the same language.
An example of this process is when company computers have their own version of an operating system. Since most people are not programmers workflow software is utilized that speaks with all the computers in a company. Many of the operations are programmed in so that all the employee has to do is simply click on an operation and boom, its sent throughout the company to the correct spot. It’s fast and easy and there is no language barrier in the network, a lot of the time if a employee that you needed to contact speaks a different language the software just translates it with no issues to the recipients desired language. In my opinion this is a great example on how the world has became interconnect even to these small details.

2) What is open source software and why is it important?

Open source software is a were a company who holds the rights to the software opens up usage and development to multiple people. It pretty much means that the software is alterable and its ok to alter it because the company that holds the rights to the product can use the alterations. It’s important because it allows the world to use the same software but tailor it to their needs. With the core software being the same it makes it easy for the variations to speak with one another. A great example of this is android, it is used in multiple devices of all different versions but it is still android.

3) What is outsourcing and why it is important?

Outsourcing is essentially teaming up with another company to provide you or your company with goods or services. This can actually be between Countries as well, such as having a country train some of your military. Outsourcing is very important to the modern day world; it connects us by utilizing everyone’s skill sets and economies. This is what gives steam to the global economy. A great example that I can think of for this is an auto manufacturer, where various countries produce various parts for the car and companies and all combined into one company to create one product. It’s like the world coming together to build something.