The Flatteners

In this chapter, Friedman talks about ten forces that have effects on the process of flattening the world and becomes equivalent which is happening right now. The first three flatteners:

1- Collapse of the Berlin Wall (11/9/89): the wall collapsed which led to the collapse of communism and raise of freedom. At the same time, the technology of computers, communications, and Windows developed and that helped connecting the world.

2- Netscape (8/9/95): went Netscape went public, everyone is can access to it no matter how old you. In addition, people can share music, films, pictures, and documents.

3- Workflow software: software that is made to connect computers together, and by doing that, people will be able to collaborate and share work together.

In my opinion, I agree with Friedman on the idea of the flatteners. Also, the first three flatteners are working together to establish the foundation for the global collaboration between individuals and corporations. For example, when the Internet became a trend in Kurdistan at the beginning of the millennia, people could get help from other people. Also, those three forces are sequential. Therefore, if any of them were happened, the next one weren’t happened too.          

The World Is flat, Chapter 1 Summary "While I was Sleeping"

Friedman makes a long journey with a crew from the Discovery Times channel around the world, which makes him believe that the world is flat. When he goes to Bangalore, India, he sees advertisements of traditionally American companies such as Pizza Hut, Epson, and HP. He notices that everyone he sees is trying to be American. What he saw in Infosys Technologies Ltd, which was a conferencing system they created that allows people from around the globe to meet and work together in one giant room via satellite and teleconferencing technology. He also gets so impressed by the campus’s advanced technology such as the glass-and-steel buildings and large flat-screen televisions. The thing that fills Friedman with excitement is that he realizes that the world is flat.

He draws us a timeline showing the different eras of globalization historically from the days of Columbus to our present day. He also says that we are now in the middle of the line when the world shrinks from small to tiny. He, later, gets impressed by the effect of remote communication on business when he meets an Indian businessman called Jerry.

We can see examples and the impact of the business outsourcing phenomenon on its players after he travels to Japan, China and back to America. He goes to the city of Dalian in China where he sees buildings of GE, Sony, Microsoft, Dell, etc., which shows that China is developing high-tech cities. In Iraq, Friedman sees how the military has been flattened through the use of computer technology. Still some other things he saw back home shocked him. When Freidman explains outsourcing in his society, Homesourcing and military outsourcing are also illustrated.

Open Source Software

The term ‘open source’ software refers to software that provides the source code. The source code and the information that is kind of related to the software, which are protected by the copyright holders, are made available to all users, who can then edit the software, also in some cases to actually redistribute the software.

Mostly, open source software are developed or modified publicly sometimes as a team or individuals. When mentioning ‘open source’ software, the first thing that comes to mind is Linus Torvalds, who was the founder of Linux, a UNIX based operating. People believe that if Torvalds had not made it available for free, it would not become as it is not in the market. Examples of open source software are Linux, which is an operating system, Perl, PHP, and Python, which are computer programming languages, Apache, which is server software, and OpenOffice, which is a desktop application.

It is hard to say if open source is better than proprietary software because they are both beneficial. Proprietary software developers’ motivation is profit, so they have to work as hard as possible to make sure their product sells, otherwise they could lose their jobs. For example, Microsoft’s software has to reach a certain quality before it is put on the market. Open source developers do not have this motivation, so the programs that they build will not be to the best of their abilities.