The World Is Flat The First Five Flatteners By B. Mark Francis

Flattener 1 11/9/89 The fall of the Berlin Wall and the proliferation of MS Windows as an Operating System –This fall represent a blow to communism as a form of government –It caused solidarity of the democratic nation against communisms –Q. What about China or North Korea? How long do you think that they will last?

Flattener #1 cont. The Windows OS –Windows became the dominant OS of the era –Communication increased the age of me and my machine…

Flattener #2 Netscape went public –This was the first of many internet booms, a web browser that challenged Microsoft –The silicon bubble –Q. how many web browsers can you name? –Do you think the world is too dependent upon wireless?

Flattener # 2 cont. Although the bubble went… has the proliferation of technology slowed? What are some recent flatteners?

Flattener #3 Work flow software –Office and work suites that fostered collaboration within and without a company –Commonality of standards (Xtml, TCP/IP) –MS Word became the industry standard

Flattener #4 Open Source –Apache web server –Linux –Open Office –Star Office –Java –Blogs

Flattener #5 Outsourcing Y2K –This led to the outsourcing phenomenon we see today –Greed led to greed –Is there anyone to blame?

Questions Are there any? How about these? –Is the world really flat? –Who are the major players –What is the next technological flattener? –When was the last time you wrote a paper letter?

Thanks for your time It has been a treat :-)