The World is Flat - Summary

The World is Flat

In the first chapter of his book "The World is Flat," Thomas Friedman is talking about the theory of the flat world and what does that mean. Friedman idea about the flat world first started when he was on a trip to India, especially Bangalore, with the Discovery channel team. As he was there, Friedman saw a number of advertisements, and most of these advertisements were for Americans companies. Moreover, as he was travelling through India he saw many Indian people, who works for American companies, talk with an American accent, and trying to behave like Americans. A visit to the Infosys technologies ltd makes Friedman very amazed because of the impressive conferencing system which allow people to collaborate in a huge room via satellite. Then Friedman talks about different examples of globalization stating from Columbus time till now. Following that, Friedman encounters Jerry Rao, whose an Indian business man, Through Jerry we learn about the importance of sharing information. Also, Sharing information  made the world a very small place. As Friedman travels through Japan, China, and Finally America, he gives examples about some business phenomena that had an impact on the world.

            As we read then In chapter two "The Ten Forces That Flattened the World," Friedman gives ten example or events that helped the world to be more flat ( Globalized). In my summary I am going to talk briefly about three of these events.

·    *     The Collapse of the Berlin Wall: 11\09\1989, The collapse of the Berlin Wall was not only a sign for the end of the cold war as Friedman mentions. The collapse of the Berlin Wall allowed people on the two parts of the wall to communicate and establish a new economic situation. Also, it helped Europe to establish the Free Market.

·   *      Netscape: 8\9\1995, This date was a very important day in the history of the world. In this date the Internet became available for the people to use, and the first browser Netscape was created. In my opinion, this the most event that helped to flatten the world. through the Internet people became able to share many information as easy as never before, and what made the world more globalized.

·      *   Work Flow Software: Which simply means the ability of computers to talk with each other without the human being involved. That when the humans depended on computers to create a whole program or show by the use of the VPN. The example Friedman gives is the Walt Disney cartoon company.