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Flattener #1: 11/9/89 Berlin Wall Comes Down

Flattener #1: 11/9/89 Berlin Wall Comes Down. What caused the wall to crumble?. U.S.-Soviet arms race caused Soviet Union to go bankrupt. Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. Information systems improved and destroyed the Soviet’s monopoly on media.

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Flattener #1: 11/9/89 Berlin Wall Comes Down

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  1. Flattener #1: 11/9/89Berlin Wall Comes Down

  2. What caused the wall to crumble? • U.S.-Soviet arms race caused Soviet Union to go bankrupt. • Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. • Information systems improved and destroyed the Soviet’s monopoly on media. • What was the significance of the Berlin Wall coming down?

  3. Significance of the fall • Tipped the balance of power across the world toward those advocating democratic, consensual, free market oriented governance, and away from planned economies. • Technological and economic standards could be developed and adopted faster and by more countries (i.e. the free movement of best practices).

  4. While the wall was falling • The Windows-enabled PC, combined with the fall of the wall, set in motion the whole flattening process. • Individuals could amass, author, manipulate, and diffuse more information. • The basic platform of a modem connected to a PC started to proliferate – the global information revolution was starting to emerge.

  5. Flattener #2: The New Age of Connectivity

  6. Internet Gains Popularity • 1991 – Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web. • Tool of connectivity and collaboration that allowed ordinary people to access information in cyberspace. • HTML became the standard language of the web. • 1991-1996 – Number of internet users increased from 600,000 to 40 million people.

  7. Netscape • Created the first browser. • Made internet accessible to everyone between the ages of 5 and 90. • Promoted open source formatting which allowed people to communicate with each other no matter what system they were using. • Open protocols integrated everyone’s networks. • Allowed people to concentrate on what they did on the internet, not how they connected to the internet.

  8. Internet Bubble • Overinvestment in internet companies. • Drove innovation faster and faster • Fiber optic cables were laid around the world • “People were first allowed to drive 50 mph, then 60 mph...then eventually 150 mph on the same highways without any fear of accidents.” (pg. 76)

  9. Excerpt from page 77: “In short, the Apple-PC-Windows phase begat the Netscape browsing-e-mail phase, and the two together enabled more people to communicate and interact with more other people anywhere on the planet than ever before.” • What does this mean to you personally? • What implications does this quote have for businesses?

  10. Flattener #3: Work Flow Software

  11. The Flat World Begins To Emerge • As a result of the first two flatteners, work started to increase within and between companies and continents faster than ever. • Browsing and e-mail were no longer sufficient. • People wanted to shape things, design things, create things, sell things, buy things, keep track of inventories, do somebody else’s taxes, and read somebody else’s X-rays from half a world away.

  12. New Protocols • Protocols (SMTP, TCP/IP, XML, SOAP, AJAX) were developed to standardize and simplify the way information flowed between networks. • People started to concentrate on what they were doing instead of how they were doing it. • Spurred innovation and collaboration.

  13. A New Business Era • Example: Protime Consulting. • Created by Justin Lu using Salesforce.com. • Able to generate more revenue by keeping systems costs low, by delivering web based services. • Salesforce.com allows Lu to market and distribute his services globally for a low-cost fee to Salesforce.com, instead of investing and maintaining his own software. • What other advantages does a virtual company have versus a traditional company?

  14. Final Thoughts/Opinion • Do you feel like we are at a turning point in history in regards to commerce? Or are we past that point? What about in culture/society? Why?

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