Dear Editor,

The World is Flat! shouts the title of Pulitzer Prize journalist, Thomas Friedman's new book. Mr. Friedman came to this conclusion after a visit to Infosys Technologies Limited offices in Bangalore, India. Mr. Friedman was impressed with the work that was being done at the information technology company: he saw Indian employees writing specific software programmes, doing research projects, performing computer maintenance and even answering customer calls (in American accents) routed there from all over the world for American and European companies.

He attributes the "flattening" of the world to the enormous amounts of money invested in the late 90s to create a global fibre-optic network and the dispersion and depreciation in the cost of computers and software; this he said "made us all next door neighbours."

Mr. Friedman is correct: multinationals no longer have the limit of selecting from a pool of employees from the country in which their operations are based; rather, the whole world is seen as a potential recruiting ground.

The economic success associated with this "flatness" has only been beneficial to a few developing countries, namely, emerging Asian eco-nomies (of which Friedman wrote extensively).

And what has been the source of this glaring disparity? Well, one does not have to be a scholar to recognize that the answer lies in education; the countries that have invested more time and resources into developing their education sector are the ones who are thriving in this flat world.

Countries like China and India have invested heavily in developing a cadre of qualified citizens, who are capable of responding to this flat world economy of knowledge-based work and instantaneous information; others, like Guyana, have been left behind.

But is Guyana forever excluded from benefiting in this flat world? The answer is emphatically no. We may be behind, but not excluded. It will be in our best interests if our private sector and political decision makers develop a mass strategic long-term plan that focuses on training and retaining individuals in the service sector, in areas such as telemarketing, accounting, computer programming, engineering and scientific research.

A mentality of innovating without emigrating should become our driving philosophy.
Yours faithfully,

Clinton Urling