The World is Flat

Yesterday, Uncle Casius and wife along with the baby daughter, Amanda, decided to go jalan jalan in Serangoon Centre.

"You know, The world is flat!", the wife suddenly said to me.
"This is the most stupid thing that I have heard! Even Amanda knows the world is round.", I turned around and whispered to her.
"Hello uncle, you should read the book by Thomas L. Friedman!", the wife mocked at me. She then continued, "The world is indeed 'flatten' due to advancement in technology. The competition ground has been levelled as information can be easily available through Google!"

This reminded me how much the technology has progressed. In the very beginning, when I was much older than Amanda, the so call network was done via 56K modem connecting to private BBS, for us to exchange small DOS based games and gossips (and yes, I exchanged picture of pretty girls in the BBS too). Then came things like Mosaic, Gopher and Veronica that linked up the campus network. And suddenly, in a big bang, you had Netscape and Internet is available to the public! I can't imagine how times flies and now our lives are depending on the web. I realised that the wife, or actually, Thomas is right that the world is indeed flatten. The old era of expert who had strong fundamental and able to remember cold hard facts in their head is slowly faded... nowadays, with Google and Wikipedia, and armed with easy access to the web, everyone can pretend to be an expert (of course they could't last long). And that day, a chao fresh grad tried to teach Uncle Casius what is structured products as investment products!! *sigh, just within a short span of less than 15 years, the entire ball games has changed.

"And you know according to Thomas due to the change in education emphasis in US, the younger American cannot count as well as most of the kids in other region.", the wife seemed to be enjoying showing off that she knows more of the global trend than me.
"Yah lah, yah lah, so next time we can go over to US to teach the ang-mo how to count 1-2-3 just like now the ang-mo flew to Beijing to teach the Chinese A-B-C", I am eager to show that I am old but not an fool yet. But then I know that the wife is correct again (or actually Thomas is). Changing the Education system seems to be the most "in" thing for many countries and even the Singapore government has decided to trim down on memorising pieces. But can we still claim that we have acquired the knowledge if we have to keep going back to the Web to retrieve hard facts?

"Hello uncle, I think you need to come out more often. In today world its more important to be able to assemble information and produce new knowledge to be able to be a few step in front of the rest!", the wife spoke as if she is already a few steps in front of me.
"I am really glad that I belong to a generation in between the old and new era. We have gone through the hard way of learning so that we have some hard facts in our head, and at the same time progressing along with the technology so that its relatively easier for us (compare to my dad) to adapt to the fast pace of technology scene!" I mumbered to myself.

I turned to Amanda and said, "I guess it’s important to have an open mind. Too easily rejecting new ideas even if they seem nonsensical at the beginning may jolly well throw the rare germs along with the trashes!". Well, Amanda could only responded to me in a puzzling look while sat in the stroller! *sigh.