Module 1

                I’m going to talk about the book The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. To be completely honest, I wasn’t very excited to read this book. That all changed after the first two pages. It started to catch my attention with the comparisons of his journey to India to Columbus’s journey. Both journeys are for the same purpose, globalization, yet both on very different levels. Columbus’s contribution to globalization takes place during the globalization 1.0 era. This was the first stage that opened up the trade between the Old World and the New World and lasted from 1492 until sometime around the 1800’s. Globalization 1.0 brought the world down from a large size to a medium. However, this was only the beginning. The second era is referred to as globalization 2.0 which lasted from the 1800’s to the year 2000. The driving force of globalization was now turned to multinational companies. Powered by lower transportation and telecommunication costs, it was the birth of a global economy. The world had now dropped to a size small. The globalization 3.0 era brought new power to individuals, giving them the ability to compete globally. This was possible through a vast global digital network. It is in this era that Thomas L. Friedman went on his journey through India. We are only in the very early stages of this era as it turns the world from small to tiny.

                The fall of the Berlin wall played an important role in globalization. The wall had essentially blocked many people from the idea and view of freedom. The fall of the wall empowered the people and took the power from the leaders, allowing the people to decide their future and see the world as a seamless whole. This event led to the rise of the Personal Computer (PC) and the start of global networks.

                Netscape’s history is extremely important to globalization. Netscape made it possible for the average user to gain access to the World Wide Web through the use of the web browser. Before the web browser, access to the World Wide Web was possible it was just not very user friendly. Netscape pioneered the standard protocols still in use today. These protocols made it possible for all systems from all manufactures to communicate and transfer data digitally through the World Wide Web. Netscape’s success led to an over investment in fiber-optic cable. This over investment was so vast that it put the investors into a price war amongst each other, thus leading to extremely low Internet access pricing and virtually free data transfer. Sure this was bad for the business, but the low prices allowed more and more people to access the World Wide Web.

                So far, this has been a very interesting read for me as it closely relates to the field in which I am studying. I love computer science and technology as a whole and I look forward to sharing my experiences of this book with you. Thank you for reading!