About the flatteners discussed in Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat".

The book “The World is Flat’’ describes the brief history of the 21^st century. It discusses such questions as why is the Earth becoming flat, what are its consequences, the challenges it causes to countries, etc. The book has three chapters, where the 1^st chapter discusses globalization and the three main ways by which it is expressed. The 2^nd chapter talks about the 10 flatteners, which I will expand on, and the 3^rd chapter is about the Triple Convergence.

I will focus on the 2^nd chapter and will talk about those 3 flatteners, which I find the most amazing. The first flattener discussed by Thomas Friedman is the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In my opinion, this is a very good example for understanding the power of human connectivity. The wall, that came down resulted in the collaboration of the western and eastern policies. And, as a result, windows came up which became good ways of communication between the two sides. I think that this is a very good example of a flattener, because when there is a wall between two sides, then the interconnection between them is vertical, i.e. they have different ideologies, by which each tries to rule the other. But when there are windows instead of the high wall, then the connection is horizontal, which means that they already have one world which is flat, and where people communicate, collaborate, work, create and do everything together and together they become a part of the flat world. The case of the Berlin wall is only one example of such kind of flattener, when due to a revolution people unite and create a united world. Such kind of things happened in different parts of the world during different eras.

The next flattener discussed by Friedman I find the most global one, which can be considered the main basis of globalization. That flattener was the Netscape, which gave the Internet browser, and which became accessible for all the people all over the world. That really made the world from big into tiny, i.e. made it flat, again from the point of view of the globalization. So, when the internet is interconnected in all over the world, it means that we have become very close to each other, irrespectable of the distance.

The 3^rd type of flattener that is very significant is the “Steroids”, which includes the wireless devices, such as mobile phones, I-pads, instant messaging, also the voice and visuals through the internet, etc. Thus, anytime, from anywhere we can connect to people in different parts of the world.

However, I disagree that the world has become completely flat. Maybe that could happen in future, but still there are countries where the usage of the internet is restricted, like in Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Turkmenistan, etc. Though, maybe these countries undergo globalization through different revolutions or habits, but not through the technologies. So, in my opinion, the world cannot be absolutely flat.

This idea has some implications for teaching and learning. I think that this is mainly related to the technologies as a flattener. E.g. through the internet a lot of people do distant learning, besides they get the information they want, and organize their self-learning process. Thus, it has a lot to do with the teaching/learning process.