The World is Round

Sometime in 2005, Internet watchers say, the billionth user logged on. No one knows who that was, of course, but according to Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, statistically, it is likely to be a 24-year-old woman in Shanghai. In news reports, blogs, and cocktail-party conversation, this data poin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Harvard business review 2006-04, Vol.84 (4), p.18
Main Author: Prusak, Laurence
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
Culture
Effects
Information
International
Internet
Knowledge
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Sometime in 2005, Internet watchers say, the billionth user logged on. No one knows who that was, of course, but according to Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, statistically, it is likely to be a 24-year-old woman in Shanghai. In news reports, blogs, and cocktail-party conversation, this data point got trotted out to underscore what's become conventional wisdom: the world is flat. Thomas Friedman, author of the best seller by that name, put the flat-world concept this way in a recent Wired interview, saying that many political and technological forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or, soon, even language. The playing field Friedman describes is, of course, level - flattened by the unfettered flow of information. But Friedman and many others make a fundamental error when they argue that brute connectivity will level the playing field. Their mistake is that they're confusing information with knowledge.
ISSN:0017-8012