Module 1

    In the first section of his book, Friedman analyzes ten 'flatteners' which are events, technologies, and systems which have dramatically shrunk the world within the contexts of communication and human interaction.  These 'flatteners' have also, according to the author, flattened hierarchies and established a new world order where rather than countries and corporations, it is individuals who are the driving force in the world today.
    He initially explains this through his concept of 'Globalization X.0' where 'Globalization 1.0' occured from 1492 to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  That period of time saw countries driven by (religious) Imperialism shape the world on a global scale for the sake of the country.  'Globalization 2.0' was from the Industrial Revolution until the inception of the Internet.  During that time period it was companies rather than countries which drove change and innovation and who competed against one another for power and wealth.  'Globalization 3.0' is the era we are in now where the explosive expansion of the Internet and the PC has allowed almost anyone from almost anywhere to design, create, collaborate, innovate, and sell as individuals rather than being forced to join a company or government to do so.  The author's concept of 'Globalization X.0' is how he describes the 'flatteners' he discusses afterwards.
    The first 'flattener' is the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Rather than simply the fall of the Berlin Wall but the whole cultural shift worldwide as a result of (or at least as a follow-on to) its fall towards open discourse, freedom of expression, and the breaking of barriers is Friedman's first 'flattener.'  Restrictions and controls stifle innovation, creativity, and progress and the fall of communism left capitalism as the only viable system available.  Since capitalism promotes amongst other things expansion, interaction, communication, and merit, a shift to capitalism worldwide broke down borders and regulations which inhibited these.
    The second 'flattener' he describes is Netscape.  The browser did two very important things.  First it caused the explosive growth of Internet usage.  It made it easy for anyone with a computer and a connection to the Internet to view the content that people were making available.  With more people using it, more content was created, and the more content created, the more people wanted to access the Internet.
    The second, and in my opinion more important thing it did was to promote the use of standard protocols for use on the Internet.  Protocols such as TCP/IP, FTP, SSL, SMTP, HTTP, and HTML which allow any machine using these open standards to communicate with each other was the true source of the Internet's success.  With an open set of standards, even if someone was working on a proprietary system, he or she could communicate with others across the Internet so long as they adopted those standards.  Netscapes market share also prevented Microsoft from gaining a monopoly on the browser which would have ment they could have dictated the protocols of the Internet to be Microsoft proprietary ones.  That would have crushed any open standards and would require anyone wishing to use Microsoft's protocols to pay Microsoft for that right.
    All in all I've found the reading to mostly be boring thus far as I already knew the concept that Friedman describes as 'Globalization X.0' from my history classes and Wikipedia, and I don't think that the fall of the Berlin Wall had quite the effect the author describes.  It no doubt changed the political climate greatly, but by this point companies were the global power and it was only a natural course for former communist countries to join the global market afterwards as their companies were no longer prevented from doing so.  I also knew about the ironic case where Microsoft brought them to court because Netscape was monopolistic.  I did find the story about Netscape interesting because I didn't know how much it had aided the adoption of open standard protocols for the Internet.