Chapter 7 Supervision: Something New Under the Sun

The thing that has been,

it is that which shall be;

And that which is done

is that which shall be done:

And there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said,

“See, this is new?”

Long valued for their ironic truth, Kohelet's words have lost their hold on the 21st century. eBay, email, eToys, eEveryThing—the sun no longer sets without a cyberspace headline. We learn of cyber-viruses that threaten our world, of cyber-entrepreneurs who morph into millionaires, and of mega-mergers between cyber-companies. Virtual University, , surely something new is upon the land, only now the land is the entire planet. Expanded by cyberspace, borders have been swapped for . Whether in a jungle or atop an ocean, we are no longer removed from office, school, or home.

In his recent book, Thomas Friedman (1999), New York Times foreign correspondent, describes what he calls the “democratization of finance, technology and information” and details how these developments have combined to create the world-changing revolution called globalization. Revolutions do not occur without tension, and the intriguing title of Friedman's new book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree,