"The Ten Forces that Flattened the World" Post #1

I had these grandeur thoughts that I would read half of The World is Flat while I was in Mexico during Christmas holidays, but it just didn't happen. I did manage to get some reading done both to and from on the plane. This first post is going to highlight some of the things that grabbed my attention in the first bit of the novel.

Flattener #1 (The New Age of Creativity: When the Walls Came Down and the Windows Came Up) was interesting as it had never occurred to me to think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the debut of Windows happening during the same time period. While the wall was up, it was difficult to think about the world in a global sense; it was difficult to think of the world as a whole. Windows 3.0 shipped only 6 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While the fall of the wall eliminated a physical & geographical barrier which kept information from passing, Windows offered a common operating system that would become a standard. PC's started to rise in popularity and enabled individuals to create, gather, collect and manipulate information in digital form on a global scale.

Then came dial-up modems which ushered in CompuServe & AmericaOnline. My very first internet connection was with AOL and I thought it was the "cat's meow" the first time I went online. Now when I visit my mother in rural Oklahoma and check my email with her dial-up and AOL it is pure torture to wait for the pages to load. We've come a long way in a short time! More to come.....