Module 5

To explain Friedman’s term of Triple convergence, I must first explain each tier of the convergence. The first tier, known as Convergence I, is the combination of all the flatteners from Globalization 2.0 and 3.0.  Each of the technological advancements of Globalization 2.0 and 3.0, explained in earlier chapters, were significant in the process of flattening the world when brought together as a whole, but when separated the significance of these advancements declines. Paul Romer, a Stafford University economist, gives an analogy of a pencil and paper. Both were great inventions, but without one another’s existence their importance dramatically decreases. Because of the connection between these global flatteners, as one concept or product is improved upon the others are bound to follow.

Convergence II or “horizontalization” Is the process of understanding the purpose and importance behind these global flatteners while making the use of the advancements habitual. A company could buy the fanciest computer in the world that could do tasks from creating workflows to taking your dog on a walk, but if nobody in the company knows how to use this computer it becomes useless. Even if the company decides to train an employee to use the computer it may still have no use if they have not yet created a new business plan to utilize the new technology.  This is essentially what Convergence II is comprised of.

Now Convergence III has more to do with international economics and politics.  Without Convergence three our global platform would be missing a large sum of about three billion people.  Before the 1990’s, Individuals from China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Central Asia would have never been allowed to compete and collaborate with other nations. By 2000 events affecting each of these groups of people, including the fall of the Berlin wall, expanded our global economy to six billion people.  When all three of these tiers of convergence came together they became the Triple Convergence

The question of who is being exploited and who is doing the exploiting in the case of Indiana and India is a tough question to answer, but in the end I believe that the people of Indiana were being exploited by their own government.  At the same time India’s government was exploiting its own residents.  I do not believe that Indiana or India were exploiting each other.

Indiana’s government was in need of an upgrade to their computer system and decided to contract out this task. When the biddings were all said and done Tata America International, a subsidiary of India’s Consultancy Service, was able to bid about a third lower than its competitors.  The state of Indiana decided to go with this India based company before thinking clearly about the resulting consequences that would come from contracting out a task this large to a company not comprising of its own people. If this was a decision made by any other business or company not under the umbrella of the federal government, it would not have been that great a concern. But when the government neglects to contract out a task to its own people who they were sworn to serve, a much larger issue is at hand. The state government’s top priority should not be money but that of its own people, who are the reason they, as government workers, have a job in the first place.

Now from India’s perspective they were only bidding on a task that was in their area of expertise. They were right in taking the business perspective and not worrying about who they were doing the job for as long as they could get a bang for their buck per say. Friedman explains that due to the Socialist economic policy of Indian government, they could not provide their own engineers with work locally. Leaving those that cannot afford to leave India to look for an alternative career field to keep food on the table.  

Intellectual property is an Invention, piece of literature, or work resulting from an individual’s own creativity. Due to new technological simplicity and ease of access, inventions, ideas and literary works are shared all over the world. Without proper knowledge of copyright and patenting laws one can easily become subject to copyright law suits or become a victim of plagiarism. This can become a hassle, but at the same time patenting laws protect innovators and motivate them to come up with new ideas. Without the protection of intellectual property, innovators would become a dying breed.