 "Photo: Steevens Alconcel | Daily Trojan")
"When the world is flat, whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be by you or to you?" three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman asked a full house in Bovard Auditorium Monday night.
Friedman's speech, based on his most recent book, "The World is Flat," challenged the audience to acknowledge the sweeping changes of globalization and how it will affect their lives.
The global-economic playing field is leveling, and the United States will have to fight to keep up with the developing world, said Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times.
Friedman's speech, part of President Steven B. Sample's Distinguished Lecture Series, addressed how the "flattening" of the world will affect the global job market both in the United States and abroad in the near future.
"When I was growing up in Minnesota my parents would say to me 'Tom, finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.' I now tell my girls, 'Girls finish your homework. People in China and India are starving for your jobs,'" Friedman said.
With the dawn of the "dot-com" movement and the "wiring of the world" with fiber-optic cable, "Beijing, Bangalore, Bethesda and Burbank" have all been allowed to become neighbors, Friedman said.
The forces of outsourcing, collaborating, uploading and informing open the door for endless creative opportunities, he said.
However, it will take generations of "great collaborators, great leveragers, great explainers, great localizers and great adaptors" to push forward with these phenomena and secure the "jobs of the new middle (class)," he said.
This question is what will pose the greatest challenge to this generation as they enter the global-economic "game" that is the job market, he said.
Friedman advised the modern student to prepare for the job market "as if you are training for the Olympics, except you don't know what sport you're training for."
He emphasized that American success on a global-economic scale will depends entirely on whether or not the younger generation uses this challenge to their advantage.
Waseem Malik, a senior majoring in business administration, and Riaz Dini, a senior majoring in international relations and biology, said they are prepared to meet this challenge and excited about the prospects.
"The international system as we knew it in the last century wasn't really fair. It's becoming more democratic," Dini said. "People are getting ahead based on merit and on their own ingenuity and intelligence."
Malik said he is excited about the opportunities and challenges presented by a competitive global market.
"Growing up, I'd read about the explorers and the discovery of the New World," he said. "This whole new connecting with the world globally (allows me to) know what that feeling of exploration is. … This is my chance. It's exciting to see what tomorrow will bring.
Friedman too said he has faith the United States will not become "road kill" to countries like China despite evidence intellectual and creative standards are becoming higher.
"We still have the best open entrepreneurial system," he said.
Hilary Fagan, a freshman majoring in international relations and economics, was equally enthusiastic about American potential.
"I think China is something to look out for but I don't think that … they're going to overcome us," she said.
Fagan said she trusts that her education at USC will adequately prepare her to compete on a global scale.
"My education at USC (provides) an amazing platform," she said. "USC has a lot of recognition in the market and it's just a really great starting point."
