......could not help but confirm Tom Friedman's theory that The World Is Flat due to the globalization of technology while I was on one of my trips to China.(see Journeys Into China)
After a late evening Shanghai dinner, I ventured out for a stroll to the darker residential and manufacturing area that lay behind the Broadway Mansions Hotel in the glamorous Bund district where I was staying.
This area was not glamorous. This was the other side. It was grim in the quietude of the shut down night, with only an occasional lone pedestrian and a few vehicles.
There, on the other side of a dimly lighted street, in the midst of many well used and funky structures was a small manufacturing shop. This one had the lights on while all others were closed up for the evening. It appeared grimy and greasy and dilapidated.
I imagined a crew of many scruffy workers cranking out with crude hammers whatever product was made there.
But one thing resonated. One thing made it modern. One thing enabled this little funky shop in the dark streets of China to compete equally on the level field of the global marketplace.
Above the door in the front of the building was a plain sign that stated: http://www.sh-wuhu.com
They had a URL address that could be easily and equally accessed in mere seconds by anyone anywhere in the modern world!
And if they managed that website address well, and had an intriguing and informative and effective site, then those workers could be banging out their widgets for a good long time.
And they could openly compete mano-a-mano with Acme Widgets on Main Street of Your Town USA.
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