IT's Flat Now:

I hope you're ready to compete, cause it's time to kick it up a notch.

  A few hundred years ago, the world was certainly flat. Continue on in one direction and you never came back to the same point. Today a situated person doesn't even have to move and finds himself at all points on earth. The massive network of information and commerce that is the internet has transformed the world so utterly, that we are very unsure of the implications. One thing has been evident and clear; The world is flat.

  Thomas L. Friedman is a best selling author and columnist of technology and foreign affairs. In a speech at MIT he discusses briefly his thoughts on the flattening of the world. An eloquent speaker, Friedman shows us that the skills we have learned on the internet are now open to almost everyone on the skin of this planet. As a result there is a market to everyone everywhere. As an individual, never in history have i had so much power of commerce, or speed of communication before in human history. Friedman discusses that in this 3rd generation of globalization the innovation and economic might doesn't just stand for the governments, nor solely corporations. For the first time the individual has the reigns more than ever before. 

Netscape was one of those things in the 90's that was huge. You could find out almost anything at the time. And all because of a very interesting accident. A misread of investors really. People lost a lot of money. Due to an over investment in early dot com start ups at the turn of the last century, fiber optic cable and information infrastructures were developed, though not yet utilized due to the overwhelming failure of the majority of start ups, but not all.The likes of Amazon, and Cisco were massively hurt by the bubble but would go on to thrive in a smaller market. 

 Before long, all the countries had joined these overpriced, over invested systems. But people were surfing these new information waves. Though most investors had lost money, there were new markets opening up on the internet. At first advertising didn't come into the online market, but followed very soon after. Now Google makes most of it's money from ad's alone.

At the end of the day no one is that special anymore, sadly. It's just as easy for employers to hire someone from a different country, because the internet has made both acquiring those skills, and those professionals a simple task. What the new reality does is force a complacent population into competition again. The US is a great economic force, but if our ideas are not more innovative than someone else, we will simply be catching up. 

What the internet has become, is mind boggling fast. So fast that the newspaper is dying before our eyes. 24 hrs is far too old. When i can see what's trending on Twitter or Facebook in a matter of moments, why pay the subscription fee?

What really illustrates to me every single day how flat the world is finding anything on the internet and reading the comments.Usually unfiltered, truthful, and sincere responses. It's just as easy to find a funny comment as a serious one requiring your input. It socializes the entire world. Making the entire population a next door neighbor. Add the smartphone into the equation, and i am not limited to my desk and am connected everywhere. For better or worse we are connected everyone.