1. The World Is Flat

2. Before Columbus
The world is viewed as much smaller than it really is.
3. The world is round (1492-1989)
The world becomes larger. Much larger!
4. The world starts shrinking
1492 1800: Globalization 1.0
Countries globalize
1800 1990: Globalization 2.0
Companies globalize
1990 + : Globalization 3.0
Individuals collaborate and compete
5. Starting in 1989, a series of events allowed the Earth to become flat again. These events are called flatteners.
6. Put the events in order
7. 1st Flattener
8. 1A
November, 1989
Fall of the Berlin Wall
End of the Cold War
Terminology: global vs. international
9. 1B
May, 1990
Release of Windows 3.0
Individuals became authors of digital content
10. 2nd Flattener
11. 2A
August, 1991
Tim Berners-Lee created the Word Wide Web and posted the first web site.
The WWW made the Internet useful.
12. 2B
August, 1995
Netscape introduced the first mainstream Web browser. It made the Internet accessible and eliminated distance, thus shrinking and flatteningthe world.
13. 3rd Flattener
14. 3
Standards:
HTTP
HTML
XML
AJAX
Individuals can now collaborate on projects.
15. 4th Flattener
16. 4
Community-uploaded content
2005
2003
2001
17. 18. 9th Flattener
19. 9
1998
Larry Paige and Sergei Brin created the search engine that was a little better than others
10,000,000 searches per hour!
20. 10th Flattener
21. 10
The steroids:
speed
graphics
mobility
22. The World is Flat
Release 3.0
by Thomas Friedman
Picador
2007