Friedman makes a long journey with a crew from the Discovery Times channel around the world, which makes him believe that the world is flat. When he goes to Bangalore, India, he sees advertisements of traditionally American companies on the roads and on the traffic, even many other American companies. He notices that everyone he sees is trying to be American. What he saw in Infosys Technologies Ltd, which was a conferencing system they created that allows people from around the globe to meet and work together in one giant room via satellite and teleconferencing technology. He also gets so impressed by the campus’s advanced technology such as the glass-and-steel buildings and large flat-screen televisions. The thing that fills Friedman with excitement is that he realizes that the world is flat.

            Friedman shows us a timeline and reveals the different eras of globalization historically from the days of Columbus to our present day. He also says that we are now in the middle of the line when the world shrinks from small to tiny, flattening to such a degree that individuals can collaborate and compete globally. Friedman tells the reader that the purpose of this book is to understand how the world became flat as well as the implications of that development.He, later, gets impressed by the effect of remote communication on business when he meets an Indian businessman called Jerry, an outsourced businessman in India, and others. Through Jerry, we learn about the process of information exchange online and the effect it has on businesses to perform various duties from remote locations with everything from tax preparation to hair appointment scheduling to hospital bookings cited as examples of outsourcing.

        We can see examples and the impact of the business outsourcing phenomenon on its players after he travels to Japan, China and back to America. He goes to the city of Dalian in China where he sees buildings of GE, Sony, Microsoft, Dell, etc., which shows that China is developing high-tech cities. In Iraq, Friedman sees how the military has been flattened through the use of computer technology. Still some other things he saw back home shocked him. When Friedman explains outsourcing in his society, Home sourcing and military outsourcing are also illustrated.

The Flatteners;

1. Collapse of Berlin Wall; The end of the Cold War broke down barriers between people. To catch your attention he identifies this flattener with 9/11. November 9, 1989 is when the Berlin Wall fell. He contrasts it with 9/11 which is journalistic-ally neat but not terribly pertinent.

2. Netscape; On August 9, 1995 Netscape went public with first internet browser available to the public at large. Now people could access information from all over the world.

3. Work Flow Software; Many software developments, standards, and protocols enable computers and other digital devices to interact over the internet so that work and other projects can be done by people any where in the world.