Moritz's Blog

Thursday, August 10, 2006

The World Is Flat

Well, to be completely honest, I have only gotten through half the book. But, I am fascinated by the idea of how much technology is changing the world. Obviously I know that change is occuring. It's everywhere. However, I am surprised to the extent that it is happening.

When I read about Walmart, and the fact that when a customer takes something off the shelf that starts a process to reshelf, I was blown away. I thought the scanner was just a quicker way to get out of the store. :)

I also feel somewhat clueless about how companies are manipulating customers. The Toshiba laptop story comes to mind. Your laptop breaks and you take it to UPS to fix. You assume that it is being sent to Japan to be fixed, when in actually it is being sent to some local shop to be fixed. On one hand, I think this is brilliant. On the other hand, as a customer, I would feel somewhat compromised.

Lots of different ideas to ponder.

1 Comments:

At 8:07 PM, Blogger Karl Fisch said...

And the scanner is pretty much already going by the wayside - to be replaced by RFID tags. They use radio waves to keep track of inventory - no need for barcodes anymore . . . Douglas County Public Libraries has already made the transition to RFID.

 

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