An American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) once said that “All creation is one”. He believed that people should try to live a simple life in harmony with nature and with others.
We now live 132 years after Emerson, with the advanced in technology and communication the idea of separation is ceasing from existing. Back then we would identify ourselves as national bonded with our local location. But that is not the case today, when everyone wants to be global. As Thomas Friedman said in his famous book, the playground is now flat and we are now competing at the same level at a global scene.
With advances in transportation, we can now have our breakfast in Kuala Lumpur and have dinner in Delhi. We also now saw an exponential decrease in communication cost. Calling your friends anywhere in the world is no longer a problem, all you need to have is internet connectivity and a smart device.
All these recent developments in transportation and communication made our world smaller. Distance is no longer a problem and businesses can run efficiently, faster and with small cost. This trend is effecting all walk of life, higher institutions are also being opened and starting to participate in the global scene. In Malaysia, we could see universities such as Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, boosting their effort to become a leading global player in the academic world.
Think about a product. A smartphone for example. You would find that the company and its technology was originated from US, the parts were fabricated in Malaysia and the assemble of the final product was made in China. The smartphone is finally sold in Mexico. This is the global trend that we saw today, as the world getting smaller, people can now sit and collaborates with each other.
On this virtue, we must equip ourselves and our generation to become a competent global player in the new interconnected world. We have to collaborate with each other and understand differences. So that we can live on this globe as one creation in harmony, just like Emerson envisaged 132 years ago.