The World is Flat....

I’m not sure what to think of Friedman’s metaphorical usage of breaking down the wall. It seems pretty obvious to me that by breaking down barriers, in this case of open source information, we relinquish power to express ideas freely, communicate more fluidly, and innovate for the future. Unless we’re talking about the implications on social sciences, then all I can say to Friedman is “duh!”
Before anyone thinks I’m totally out of tune and not looking at the big picture let me just add that I see what he means when he tells me that the world is flatter as the world becomes more connected to each other. I’ve heard this analogy before in conversation with friends, but using different terminology. Have you ever heard anyone say the world is smaller or it’s not at big as you thought? Of course you have, and Friedman uses his own prose to systematically map out the evolution of the latter part of the information age using political metaphor and economic evidence to make his point.
However, from a historical point of view the events that transpired that brought about Windows 3.0 or even Windows 95, Netscape, fiber optic wiring, and so forth have huge implications at the speed by which these entities contributed to “flattening” the world. For example, Friedman quotes John Doerr of Netscape, “The Netscape IPO was a clarion call to the world to wake up the Internet." Until then, it had been the province of the early adopters and geeks (Friedman, 61). I can’t imagine many people would argue that the outsourcing of the Internet to the public via Netscape was the most evocative affair of our time. Everyone and I mean everyone was able to access the Internet at their leisure. Many thought that it would take some time for people to embrace the Internet, but that wasn’t the case. If people find a significant enough need for something they won’t mind the learning curve to incorporate it into their own cultural sphere.
So here we are in the now. We have free exercise of Internet uploading and downloading, e-commerce, e-mail, webcams, e-learning, and others so that we are pressing forward to either our demise or our eventual dominance in a Utopian world. Time will tell!