The Ten Forces That Flattened The World

I wish I could have complemented on all of the flatteners but I had to cut them in half for time and space reasons. I have briefly discussed the first five flatteners in detail below.

The New Age of Creativity: While the fall of the Berlin Wall opened the world up politically to globalization, the PC removed the physical constraints and made it all possible. I am by no means down playing the role the collapse of the Soviet Empire had on flattening the world. As Friedman said, it allowed us to think of the world as a single market. However, the PC allowed us to take advantage of this global marketplace. Because of the PC, information became more powerful and free flowing and to me that was the key to making the world flat.

The New Age of Connectivity: With information at our fingertips and the world opened up like never before and Netscape allowed us to reach out to the world. I think one important thing to take from this is that the internet became more accessible and easy to use which increased demand and usefulness of it. The other important thing to take from this is compatibility. Having one common way to “get on the internet” is what allowed for this new connection between people anywhere in the world.

Work Flow Software: It logically follows that if everyone has standard protocols work can easily be shared and transferred. I love the way it was put in the text, “Standards don’t stop innovation, they just clear away a lot of extraneous stuff so you can focus on what really matters.” Because we have developed standards such as XML or TCP/IP, we can outsource and focus on adding value to our products and services.

Uploading: It seemed that uploading gave the little person, the geeks as Friedman calls them, more power. The little man no longer needs the traditional institutions they could simply create their own. People no longer have to watch the game they could now be a part of it. Two things stuck with me from this flattener. First, many (Microsoft executives) believe that open-source community developed software will not survive because there is no economic incentive but the evidence would suggest otherwise. I think that empowerment the individuals get in these community based initiatives outweigh the economic benefit. The evidence seems to support my belief. Firefox gained 10% of the browser market in one year, Youtube has literally created self-made stars, and Wikipedia has 841,358 articles compared to the 36,000 Encarta offers. The numbers speak for themselves. The second thing that stuck with me is that uploading also empowers individuals with malice intent. Anyone could change a Wikipedia biography or spread viruses through their uploaded content. Our willingness to accept this information or content without question could lead to dire consequences.

Outsourcing: There are several factors that led to the development and success of outsourcing. Outsourcing in turn is one of the flatteners of the world. India has benefited significantly from the overcapacity of fiber optics. Indians and their American counterparts are able to use all of this for next to nothing. Another factor in the success of outsourcing is the highly educated Indian population. Indians realized early on that the intellectual power of their citizens could provide them with a huge advantage. This is what seemed to set them apart from other Asian nations and allowed them to be a prime nation for outsourcing. I believe this is perhaps the single most important factor making India the powerhouse that they are. Another key factor was India’s finance minister opening up the economy for competition. I thought it was somewhat amusing that thing that bought all of these seemingly unrelated factors together was the Y2K threat. It was because of this threat the Americans found themselves searching for computer engineers and India found itself providing them. I do not know if I would go as far to call it Indian Independence Day as Friedman did but it was a major turning point for the country.