The world is round. This is something that we have learned from an early age and has been proven to be true. So why read a book called “The World is Flat” when we know it not true? Thomas Friedman, author of The World id Flat, is not trying to literally prove the world is flat, just in a business sense. He shows us that the world becoming globalized making it a flatter world.
There are ten forces that Friedman talks about that flattened the world. The first one is when the Berlin Wall fell down and computers rose. The opening up of the borders of many communist countries opened up a mass of people that were never exposed to the Western World and the technology coming out of it. Computers in their earliest form were coming out in the late eighties early nineties.
The second flattener was when Netscape went public. It brought the Internet to everyone which was a huge step toward globalization. Netscape, with the addition of cables and hardware laid down to enable it, allowed people to connect easily with each other. This made it much easier for people to be able to share ideas both for work and for pleasure all over the world. Netscape also triggered the dot com boom in which was later followed by the dot com bust.
Workflow software is the third cause of the flattening of the world. Workflow software enables machines to work together using standardized processes. This made it easier for different companies to work together as well as different branches within a company, even worldwide. The standardization of the processes basically allows people to work together more efficiently.
The first three flatteners laid the groundwork for the next six flatteners. The first of the next six is uploading. With uploading comes community developed software. This means that ...