Talking about Heli rides in the previous post - thought of sharing the New York City ride with you
… Charles indicated that he had stopped speaking extemporaneously when he began to upload his notes from his Inraxx into the EA-RA computer. The first image to appear on the screen was a map of Manhattan.
“I came up with this after listening to different versions of Fellows’s trip over New York City. I don’t want to sound redundant, but some items are worth repeating. For one, Manhattan is unique in that it is an island surrounded by the North American land mass with the Hudson River forking around it from the north and entering the harbor at its southern tip. Incidentally, that view is visible from my office on lower Broadway.
“Manhattan is indisputably the financial and cultural capital of the world. Much of its preeminence is based on its deep glacially carved harbor. But, it wasn’t always that way. Originally, Philadelphia was the commercial capital of the United States. However, insurance companies in London determined that New York’s harbor was deeper and therefore presumably a safer bet for shipping than Philly. When the insurers lowered the insurance premiums to ships sailing into New York, the immediate result was that shipping commerce abandoned Philadelphia and moved to New York.
“One doesn’t have had to live in Manhattan to be fascinated by its international allure, a tacit acknowledgement of its comprehensive position as the cultural, ethnic and religious center of the world. Further, it is the global headquarters of international business and finance centered on Wall Street, although it will be facing some tough competition in the future from emerging dynamic cities like Shanghai, which still needs several decades to see if it can deliver on present expectations.
“The conventional view of Manhattan resembles the picture of its skyline that is burnt in all our memories: a condensed cluster of glass and steel skyscrapers reaching up to the heavens, surrounded by its workforce neighborhoods and connected by a vast and complex infrastructure.
“So far so good. However, in the world of the Global Space Tribes, an 8W8 Heli ride looks very different. The neighborhoods of Manhattan’s population, as I just mentioned, are filled with people from every global cultural and ethnic persuasion and are members of different Global Space Tribes. Physically, their tribal signatures are only made visible by the large number of differing ethnic restaurants and competing religious edifices. Totally invisible, however, are their connection with their Global Space Tribe members living in other parts of the US, or in any other country for that matter. From the neighborhoods of New York City, there are global streams emerging in an invisible ebb and flow. From the cockpit of the 8W8 Helicopter, one can see this extra-national uncontrolled and uncoordinated information flow; the global interactivity, knowledge and file sharing; there is Internet money flow, greetings sent for every cultural and religious occasion to family and friends around this flattened world.
“The neighborhoods of New York City are of specific heights relative to their Action volume specific to individual neighborhoods. Tribers live within their volume based on a fixed geography. Depending on with whom they are communicating, they may send their information up from the mountain of New York City to the tower of Lake Geneva in Switzerland or down to the valley of Uzbekistan. The streams in which the tribal information is delivered—in or out, up or down—are of different volumes, but it all travels through the neighborhoods. If colors are added to the streams, they would be viewed as colorful landscape subject to diversity; benchmarked and weighted heavily in the 8W8 Dashboard. From the perspective the 8W8 Helicopter pilot, Manhattan would appear as a blue mountain of colors.
“When viewing the New York City Mountain from any angle, the pilot would see a tower rising above it. That tower is called Manhattan. It is on the summit of the New York City peak, and it is built on diversity, knowledge and power. It is a transactional world business tower in which corporate board room decisions are made, their tentacles reaching out and impacting on the entire world. The information ebb and flow becomes compressed within the streams of the largest volume which network the entire world. The tower radiates a kaleidoscope of color more radiant than the Blue Mountain of Colors. It is composed of diverse layers and is all inclusive.
“As a virtual focus, it is a pot de font of vertical and horizontal stakeholders of every persuasion. This is adding a lot of yellow to its color and is weighted heavily as it surpasses the global benchmark. It exists out of a confluence of the element driven streams generating highly influential Global Space Tribes whether they represent the arts, business, science, politics or the entertainment industry. The Broadway stage floor or the concert hall is where the theatrical and musical tribes emanate their color and light. By the same token, Manhattan’s art museums and galleries radiate colors, as do the trading floors of the Wall Street financial institutions, whose transactions network around the flattened globe. The Central Park Sky Garden is the floor where the Tower of Colors inhabitants enjoy their breaks from their lives in the Tower of Colors on the blue Mountain of Colors.
“After we have explored the earth volume’s manifoldness, we now fly up to New York City’s sky volume, which is one of the most voluminous of its kind. Some of the colors of the Earth Level volumes translate into the soft values of the Sky Level volume, while others do not. The sky volume has a bright blue for its overall purchasing power parity and related accessible diversity if it is appreciably weighted. The sun is shining very yellow, too, as it is a place of competences, education and a melting pot of culture. While there are some smaller gray-greenish clouds for its environmental condition caused by its intensity of population, consumption habits, limited natural spaces and immense traffic, we also see some clouds with a red sheen and a little gray. Many of its inhabitants came to New York to make something happen in their lives and succeed. At the same time, a small number of people are caught in a never-ending struggle to survive, victims of the material and psychological stresses resulting from the extreme competitiveness of Manhattan Island.
“When the 8W8 Heli leaves the Tower of Colors going down the blue Mountain of Colors towards the east, it flies over the Atlantic all the way to the diverse landscapes of Europe continuing further through many valleys of Russia and Central Asia, ultimately arriving in the diverse landscapes of Asia. From there, the 8W8 Heli continues its ride towards the southern hemisphere, all the way from Australia to Africa and South America. While this sounds like a long but conventional route around the world the 8W8 Heli pilot has discovered new valley or mountain shaped volumes that shine blue, yellow, gray or black, but also has come across: red clouds of happiness; thunderstorms for dictatorships and human rights infringements; bright blue skies for wealth enabling quality, together with yellow for excellence in the defined fields. Now, the 8W8 pilot has been able to map out some routes to go through the world of the Global Space Tribes, which will be a new adventure for the entire world’s population globally. “
Thomas Friedman has taken the World is Flat to the next level and has drawn some concrete and useful conclusions based on various issues discovered and solution proposals mapped against. Good stuff. Actually, 8W8 - Global Space Tribes, was written to visualize what is happening in a flat world incorporating all kinds of issues and parameters including intensity of 
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