In this chapter, Friedman talks about the policies developing countries must have succeed in the flattening world. The first step should be taken for a country is to look at the ten flatteners an d consider their place.  And the next step after that is having open or free marketing, which can rescue countries from poverty. A nation needs three things for development: infrastructure, appropriate education, and the right governance.

Besides those, nations should create “business-friendly environments” that make easy for businesses to be started, handled, and stopped.  Friedman talks about Ireland as the example of developing nation; as he said “the sick man of Europe to the rich man” and building infrastructure, education, and governance were what made them so. This proves that capital seeks for the most productive labor at the cheapest price rather than only the cheapest labor.

In addition, Friedman thinks that culture, which is a very controversial topic, influences a country’s economic performance, but it is one of the many elements. He says that open cultures can best apply and willing to the changes in the flattened world and closed cultures are fully the opposite.  He says that Arab-Muslim world has narrowed many nations’ growth.  The main phenomena in these countries is preventing women from working and entering public, which stop their development. 

Friedman believes that sometime a country has all proper elements, such as education, governance, and infrastructure, etc. except one. He names this missing element “the intangible things” and they are a willing society and leaders’ vision.  He gives China and Mexico as examples when China succeed but Mexico didn’t.

Freidman starts his presentation talking about how he got the idea of writing his book. After the big event of 9/11, he did some research in many places about how those people think of America. Once in India, he interviewed a man called Nandan. He said something to Friedman that made him think wonder it, which was “the global economic plain field has been leveled and you Americans are not ready”. Then he discovered that that man meant that world is becoming flat, and that is how he started his book. Then he makes an analogy between himself and Christopher Columbus. Columbus had to go west to get to India and he came up with the idea that the world is round. However, Friedman took east to get to India and he came up with that the world is flat.

Then, he explains the first chapter in his book and he divides globalizations into three eras. The first era is from 1492 till 1800s. The dynamic agent in this globalization era was countries and it converted the world from large to medium. The second era is from 1800s till 2000 which converted the world from medium to small, and the dynamic agent for this era companies. The last era is from 2000 and on which has converted the world from small to tiny and individuals are the dynamic agent of this era.

After that, he talks about the ten factors that made the world flat which he calls them “the flatteners”.  The first flattener is the fall of Berlin wall in 11/9/1989. This enabled the west and east communicated better. The second is the release of Netscape which enabled everyone uses the Internet for free. He called that “this brought the internet alive” because it was only for scientists and researchers before.  The next flattener is work flow which made possible for applications to be connected. This made easy and possible for people to work together from different places. These three created collaboration and other several things made this collaboration much easier which were: outsourcing, offshoring when China joined the world, open sourcing when Firefox and Linux were released, supply chining, insourcing and informing when Google was created and people could inform themselves by themselves. And the last flattener is the steroids which are wireless, voice over internet, file sharing, etc.

Finally, he explains the three convergences. The first convergence is when all the ten flatteners came working together and make everything in the world easier. After that, the businesses and everything in the world have had to horizetalize. This is a long process that continues for a long time. The last convergence is when China, India, and Russia began opening their economies to the world. He goes to the last chapter about the phenomena can be used. Now those tools are available for everyone, so they can be used for bad things and good things. He gives an example, and the example is an analysis between 9/11, the fall of the two trade tower in New York, and 11/9, the fall of Berlin Wall.

Now individuals are free and able to participate in the globalization very easily. Also because the world is flat, the next generation will be different from us. Also, governments and system affect the way countries participate in globalization. Some countries like Iraq, war has made so much effect. However, globalization cannot end wars and end the effect of geopolitics.

In this blog post, I would like to talk about the four “flatteners” Thomas L. Friedman discussed in his book “The World Is Flat.”

·         Supply-Chaining:  Friedman makes a comparison between the modern retail supply chain and a river. He gives us his best example of a company using technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and shipping, which is Wal-Mart

·         Insourcing: “FedEx and UPS not just delivering packages anymore. They are synchronizing global supply chains large and small.”  Insourcing is when a company's employees perform services – “beyond shipping” – for another company.  Friedman uses UPS as the prime example.

·         In-Forming:  Yahoo, MSN Web Search, and mainly Google are examples of In-Forming. However, Friedman uses Google as the prime example.  As he says, "now processing roughly one billion searches per day, up from 150 million just three years ago". Now people can get answers for any question they have in the world by simply writing it in Google search engine. From the creation of Goggle it has become possible and very easy to find so much information about so many things.

·         The Steroids: steroids are Personal digital devices like mobile phones, iPods, personal digital assistants, instant messaging, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Besides the ten flatteners, Friedman gives "the triple convergence," three additional components that acted on the flatteners to create a new, flatter global playing field.

1.     Before 2000, the ten flatteners were semiautonomous from one another. However, around the year 2000, all the flatteners met in a point.  Each flattener improved the other flatteners; “the more one flattener developed, the more leveled the global playing field became.”

2.     After the appearance of the ten flatteners, businesses needed to collaborate horizontally instead of vertically, which means companies and people team up with other departments or companies to adjoin value creation or innovation.

3.     After the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries with Soviet economic model, such as India, China, Russia, and the nations of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Central Asia, started opening up their economies to the world. This enhanced horizontal collaboration. Friedman names the Convergence III as the most effective factor of determining politics and economics in the early 21st century.

In this blog post, I would like to talk about three of the ten “flatteners" Thomas L. Friedman discussed in his book “The World Is Flat”.

1.      Uploading is the third “flatteners" in his book. He thinks of it as "the most disruptive force of all."  Examples of uploading are open source software, Wikipedia, and blogs.

2.      Outsourcing is the fifth “flattener” in his book.  Friedman argues that outsourcing has permitted companies to divide service and manufacturing activities into parts that can be “subcontracted and performed in the most efficient, cost-effective way.”  Also, this became easier with the invention of World Wide Web

3.      Offshoring is the sixth flattener Friedman discusses. By offshoring, he means moving the interior company to other parts of the world.  For example, China goes in the World Trade Organization, and companies in United States go in job in China. 

In the last presentation for IT class, my group did something good or right and some other things wrong.  The first bad thing we did was that one of my team members was standing in front of the screen which blocked the audience from seeing the staff on the screen.  Second, the same member was very hesitant and so nervous that he couldn’t explain the staff he was responsible for well. His pronunciation was very bad. Also, we didn’t have the final draft of the presentation document. We played a rough draft which had many mistakes and less information.

My team did two things very good. First, we presented enough information, or a lot of information, about the topic. Second, we were able to answer to answer all of the audience’s questions correctly.

My team members and I should do several things for the next information. First, we all should work with our pronunciations and how stand, or in other word, how we act.  Also, we should make sure that we have the right data so that we will present everything we want.