The World Is Flat Summary

“The World is Flat” is a very catchy yet baffling title. Initially, no clue is given about the book being related to technology, yet the author is able to describe how technology is revolutionizing the world. Thomas L. Friedman starts his book by describing how he came up with the phrase “The World is Flat”. He begins his book by comparing his journey to the one of Columbus’ trip to India and how Columbus and had concluded that the world was flat. On his visit to Bangalore he visits Infosys Technologies Limited. While setting up the camera for the interview, Nandan Nilekani the CEO of the company gave a tour of the campus. While on the tour Nilekani takes Friedman to the conference room and tells him “so, this is our conference room, probably
But before he starts he refers to the bible, “The Bible tells us that God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. Flattening the world took a little longer” (50). Then he starts off with his ten forces that flattened the world. The first flattener is the fall of Berlin wall on 11/9/89 which opened previously closed market and the combination of the web and the internet. The fall of the berlin wall ended the cold war which reunited a broken country. Not only did it introduce technological advances but it also helped grow the country back to normal. Friedman says that “The fall of the Berlin Wall didn't just help flatten the alternatives to free-market capitalism and unlock enormous pent-up energies for hundreds of millions of people in places like India, Brazil, China, and the former Soviet Empire” (53). He then refers to the web and the internet. This is the second flattener and he describes it in two phases. First phase is the computers and the other phase is internet. Both of these things have allowed individuals to connect with one another all around the world. Then Freidman talks about the collaboration of businesses across countries using software and how they are uploading things on the internet which makes information available to people globally with in a fraction of second. This marks the third flattener. Businesses are using theses software’s to merge with other
The first convergence being how things were different after the year 2000. Things changed because everything became global because of the use of web platform. The second convergence was the presence of business skills and practices such as managers, innovators, business school’s designers, IT specialists, CEOs and workers. These were the then flatters that enhanced the ten flatters. The third convergence was when billions of people entered on to the ground. Countries such as China, Russia, Latin America, Europe, India and Central Asia their economic systems changed in a way that they were able to join the free-market. Because of the free market there have been a number of jobs available to the people in these countries. Friedman ends this chapter by referring to this statement that “technology will literally transform every aspect of business, every aspect of life and every aspect of society.”