com 125, 2nd assignment:Technology reshapes the global economic map in the 21st century

Today’s global economy is genuinely borderless. Information, capital, and innovation flow all over the world at top speed, enabled by technology and fueled by consumers’ desires for access to the best and least expensive products. (Ohmae, 1995). Yes it is true that we are now live in a borderless world, a world where the national is no longer relevant or meaningful economic units and in which consumer tastes and cultures are homogenized and satisfied through the provision of standards global products created by global corporations with no allegiance to place or community. Thus, the ‘global’ is claimed to be the natural order of affairs in today’s technologically driven world in which time-space has been compressed. The ‘end of geography’ has arrived and everywhere is becoming the same. (Peter Dickens, 2003). Technology is one of the most important processes underlying the globalization of economic activity.

Evolution of Internet
The internet: the “skeleton of cyberspace”



These developments in the communication media have been joined by an even more revolutionary technology that provides the potential for interactive communications on a global basis. “the skeleton” of this emerging cyberspace is the Internet, whose origins go back to the early 1970s and are to be found within The US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (APRA).By the late 1970s, the personal computer revolution, built on the technical foundations created by the ARPA researchers a decade previously, had created a new industry and a new subculture. By the late of 1980s, Internet, the successor to ARPANET, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, already includes tens of thousands of researchers and scholars in private industries and universities connected to the Net through their institution’s computer centers (Rhringold 1993).

ARPANET TO INTERNET


ARPAnet stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. In the 1965, the first network WAN created Berkeley and MIT via telephone line. It is all about to plugging PCs into telephone. All of the off-the shelf devices that you could plug to make that work, the “enabling technologies “for personal telecommunications, were available and the price was dropping. With the powerful computers available to citizens today and affordable modems, you don’t need an expensive, high-speed conduit like Internet uses. (Rhringold, 1993) . Firstly , the ARPANET network was constructed by linking four nodes. University of California at Los Angeles, SRI(in Standford), University of California at Santa Barbra, University of Utha. Only in 1970, ARPA net becomes a major player. 23 computers are connected to the ARPANET in all over the states. In 1972, There were Public demonstraion of ARPAnet between4 40 PCs in Wahington DC and since from that time, each computer center is a community of individuals who share computer resources, and when it joins the high speed backbone of internet, each community is virtually connected to every other, via private email, public real time chat and worldwide public conversations such as Usenet.Net culture tool on a global , youthful, often heavily American flavor as so many colleges wroldwide ( Norway , England and etc) came online, starting in the United States. Usenet, is an open system focusing on email communication and devoted to ‘newsgropus’ is opened and still thriving today . In 1979 , instead of email ,internet plays a very impotant role in this global networking Unfortunately , The APRANet comes to a complete halt in October 1980 beacause of an accidentally –propagated status message virus. However, after a few months, Bitnet was develpoed City University New York to link university seientists using IBM computers , regardless of discipline. In 1982, european version of the Unix network which is an operating system is a master control program that handles interactions betwwn human user and computer programs was established. (Rhringold, 1993).Actually , it was linking networks in the UK,Scandinavia and the Netherlands, followed in 1984 by a European version of Bitnet , know as EARN ( European Academic and Research Network)

FIRST TIME THE WORD INTERNET IS USED


In 1982 , the most important and useful word in today technology so called "INTERNET" is born and first time ever used. It uses a connected set of network using the TCP/IP standard.
after that it divided into MILNET and ARPANET.MILNET and the advanced research componet, DOS .IN 1985, Quantum' first online, "Q link" launced on Commodore Business Machine.In 1988, the concept called the world wide web, WWW was designed by scientists at CERN(Geneva). WWW is a network of sites that can be searched and retrived by a special protocol known as Hypertext Transer protocol (HTTP) . The internet users become more and more and in the 1990s , it has 92 million internet users only in US. and there was tremendously online developments like Archie -ftp in 1989, Internet relay Chat(IRC) was developed in 1989.
At the same year, the first email relay beings between a commercial online service.In 1990,the first Internet search-engine for finding and retrieving computer files is started and the word ARPA net ceases to exist ad the network is now officially referreed to as INTERNET.




To wrap this , Technology indeed reshape the global economic map in the 21st century. A handful of companies discovered success developing business models that would not exist if not for the World Wide Web. These include Google's search engine and its system of "relevent advertising", Apple Computer's iTunes web music store and Expedia's web-based travel service. Other companies, while offering traditional services, managed to find a solid Web-based niche and survive the bust; these include Amazon.com (books and media) and eBay (auctions) which we dont need to go shop around the wrold . This era also brought social networking websites to light, that along with iTunes, are today an extensive part of youth culture, such as MySpace, Xanga, Friendster, Facebook, and youtube.(wekipedia,2006). What Thomas Friedman stated " the world is flat ' is ture . I believe that the advent of internet , wireless technology , search engine and other innovations , the world is becoming more flattened. the location does not really mattter, We all are in same level in the sense that we can do business anywhere of hte world easily . However, the notion that' the world is flat' , may be ture for some cases like by means of technology but we cannot declare that it is totally flat. for example , even for technology , there has been lots of developing countries or Third world countries that cannot access the ineternet. With that come power disparity, and in these developing countires , usually only the rich ones have access to the technology . ( Except , for some places like Bangalore,and Dalian , where the infrastructure are there) . Indeed , there are still bumps in this world like language, culture , political barriers to entry other country . So We can never say that the world is flat but indeed , technology does really reshape the world economic map in 21st century .It really eliminate the time and space of the world when doing business.

REFERENCES

History of World Wide Web (5 September, 2006). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 25, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_World_Wide_Web&oldid=73974490

Rheingold,H.(1993) Visionaries and Convergences:The Accidental History of the Net.The Virtual Community. New York:Perseus Books.Retrived
http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/3.html

Dicken,Peter(2003)Global Shift, 4th Edition , chapter 4 ,Technology, the Engine of Change

History of the Internet (2006, Aug 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_Internet&oldid=70771572