Daryle S. Rogers
Columbia College
Managerial Finance
BUSI 570
Dr. Elisa Fredericks
June 29, 2010
The World Is Flat Book Review The World Is Flat is a book about how the business world has become more interconnected within the last few decades. Friedman describes in the beginning of the book a trip to Bangalore, India where he visits “India’s Silicon Valley”(Friedman, 2007, p. 2) and is amazed at the level of technology that has come to the once third world country. Friedman then goes into the ways that the world has become flat and what he considers to be the ten flatteners. The first flattener is 11/9/89 The New Age of Creativity: When the Walls Came Down and the Windows Came Up. (Friedman, 2007, p. 51) In this section of the book he discusses how the fall of the Berlin wall and the eventual fall of communism in Eastern Europe opens up the once closed area of the world to capitalism. He also discusses how the invention of the personal computer, and Microsoft Windows® have taken hold throughout the business community. The second flattener is 8/9/95 The New Age of Connectivity: When the Web Went Around and Netscape Went Public (Friedman, 2007, p. 60) in this section of the book Friedman discusses how the world can now take it’s personally authored pieces, that are now in digital form, to the next level through connectivity. He describes the early stages of the internet and how Netscape® became the original web browser. With the invention of the internet and web browsing now possible people and business from all over the world can now communicate almost instantaneously, shortening both distance and time differences throughout the business world. The third flattener is Work Flow Software (Friedman, 2007, p. 77). Here Friedman discusses how software companies develop new or improved software to make the individual pieces of business come together seamlessly which provides increased productivity