The Most Critical World Flattener

Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat describes ten events that greatly shifted the dynamic of life on earth. The World is Flat introduces a paradigm shift — a world which had previously sheltered civilizations from the benefits and dangers of other far away countries has become increasingly open in nature. Countries once distanced by great oceans, valleys, and mountains, are now only a step away.


While the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989, offshoring, supply chaining, and insourcing are all certainly important factors to consider in how the world has become truly global I believe computers have impacted globalization far more than any other event.


The release of Netscape to the public on August 9th, 1995 had by far the greatest impact on globalization. Computers were becoming increasingly widespread across the world. The World Wide Web has influenced the world far more than any other factor ever has — and possibly more than any other factor ever will. Netscape allowed for laymen to access the World Wide Web en masse. This shaped the world as it is today. People began to share their ideas and stores began to sell their products. Communication was now an open platform and web pages could be created by anyone with the knowledge to do so. This provided a huge contribution to the world as we know it as it was previously very difficult to publish personal thoughts and spread ideas. It was now easy to meet people from around the world to communicate and collaborate.


While this was all very important there was one more key factor: the search engine. Information was difficult to find on the web. Websites that contain the content users are actually looking for were impossible to find until their was a way to organize such information. As such, Netscape would have had limited impact if search engines were never invented. Imagine the world wide web (I am being careful here not to use the word internet as it pertains to much more than the web) where people from around the world post ideas that only their close friends will ever see. Well known companies are the only web pages that can be found with relevancy. Everything else is clutter.


Without Netscape and search engines that could organize such a massive amount of information, the world would be unable to connect as it has and it would be much "rounder" than it is today.


Oh, and For Your Information, the difference between the internet and the World Wide Web can be found here: http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/Web_vs_Internet.asp

And the link found above was found by using a search engine: