The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

Friedman writes that he first had the notion that the world was “flat” on a visit to Bangalore, India, in 2004. Friedman was in Bangalore—the Silicon Valley of India—to report on his visit to the headquarters of Infosys. The company’s CEO, Nandan Nilekani, gave Friedman a tour of Infosys’s capacious conference room. There, people from around the world could meet in a teleconference. Nilekani told Friedman that “the playing field is being leveled” (7). With basic computer equipment and an Internet connection, a group of people can collaborate on a project from anywhere in the world. They can also divide the project into parts and send them around the world to be completed. This is what Friedman means by the world being flat.

Today, the world is more connected by globalization than ever before. Friedman argues that there have been “three great eras of globalization” (9). He calls the first era Globalization 1.0, which lasted from 1492 until 1800. It was dominated by nation states and power in terms of brute strength. According to Friedman, it also reduced the size of the world in terms of how integrated countries were. Globalization 2.0 was the next era, spanning the 200 years from 1800 until 2000.