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The World is Flat

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The World is Flat
Thomas Friedman
"The World is Flat"

Study Guide and Note Sheet

Chapter One: "While You Were Sleeping"

How did Friedman accidentally discover that the world is "flat"?
When he was in India doing an interview

What are some anecdotes that illustrate Friedman's initial discoveries of the flat world?
The software that he was using to understand the world’s economics was being produced in India, China, and Japan, these “third world countries” that we look down upon. Millions of Chinese speaking Japanese are running the backrooms of multimillion dollar corporations. McDonalds which does a global

Friedman indicated that his metathesis included three great eras of globalization. When were these?

1. 1.0= 1492-early 1800 when the world shrank down from big to medium, when other countries began to globalize, when global through your own country, colonizations of other contries

2. 2.0 early 1800-2000 corporations globalizing, going global through companies, world going from medium to small

3. 3.0= world going from small to tiny, where the area of the global economic playing field is flattening. This is unique because it is built around individuals and small groups globalizing. It will not be grouped around white western individuals, but everyone.

Chapter Two: "Ten Days the Flattened the World"

1. 11/9/89- Berlin wall comes down. Fall of the wall huge flattener because we are able to see the wall flat as well. This introduced the idea of globalization. “walls came down, windows came up”, Microsoft launches windows computer system.

2. 8/9/95- Netscape going public, first browser that brought internet into the home.

What were three things that the event of 8/9/95 triggered?

a. transmission protocols and made sure that netscape would not have a monopoly over the internet

b. made

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