The World is Flat. Chapters 1 to 4

Before Columbus, the world was thought to be flat. From 1492 onwards, people knew it was spheric (or almost). From 1989 it went into a flattening process which has almost been accomplished all round the globe.

There were ten forces which haves are making the world flat: the fall of the Berlin wall (11/09/89), when Netscape went public (8/9/95), the work flow software (standards, etc), uploading to the net, outsourcing, offshoring, supply-chaning, insourcing, in-forming (Google, Yahoo, etc), and finally what he calls the 'steroids' (digital, mobile, personal and virtual).

This flattening went together with the process of globalization, divided in 3 eras: "Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing... Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing... Globalization 3.0 is the new flound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally".

Thus, this flat world has brought the capacity for individuals to compete in the market against anybody, whether it is a country, company or other individual from anywhere in the world and with very few resources.

This is given because people can access information in an extremely easy way (search engines are the tool in this case), they can share information in many fashions (sites, blots, etc), economies ar open for that sharing, and even if they don't, the Internet facilitates it. In few words, this flattening was brought about by the opening of people, the PC, the Internet, the browsers and all the tools that come along with that. But th flat world has to be taken advantage of with hard work.