The flatting of the world is an interesting metaphor, but one that works for this story. While the earth maybe be round and will never really flatten out, the advancements made by the different generations have leveled the playing field as Friedman points out in his book.  With information, being transferred just as fast as it is created the world is now without dividers, walls, or distances that once stood in the way. The fact that computers have allowed people to share their own content with everyone has made it so that everyone and anyone could publish their ideas to the world.  A feat that in the past could not be accomplished with out the big companies help, which never came cheap.  However, the World Wide Web and the Internet have made it so that anything and everything can be shared easier and faster.  It has changed the way we live and the way we work.  These changes could not have occurred without the work that of great minds.  One grand thing that allowed the spread of ideas to happen so easily was the creation on Netscape.  While the Internet was around and in use before the creation of this revolutionary program, it was limited to the nerd’s and geeks that fully understood Internet protocol on limited networks.  This program allowed information to spread easily, so whether you knew the computer that you where trying to get it from or not it was accessible.  Netscape allowed more people to get info with simple a search feature.  This made it that anyone with access to a computer could do a quick search and get the information they were looking for.  Further making the world a small flat even playing field, that anyone could step up and quickly make themselves globally known. Friedman points to a good example of this with the self made news networks.  Bill Ardolino from InDC Journal created his own page and posts stories himself and has people logging into to his page to read his views on stories as well as his interviews.  The best part about this is that he was able to do the entire thing with a minimal set-up.  Just a simple MP3 voice recorder and the camera on his cell phone, and this is when this book was written.  Now someone could do the exact same thing with the standard recording app that come on the iPhone and Androids and the built in camera that gets better with every new model.  The spread of knowledge did not start with the web or the Internet though, one great big break though for knowledge was just that a break in the wall.  The falling of the Berlin wall did more than just reconnect a city.  It showed a communist half the ideas of freedom and democracy.  These ideas took root and caught on like wild fire ultimately ending the USSR. Again, these ideas could not have happen without out prior globalization.  As Friedman describes there were three eras of globalization and he breaks them down as 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.  The first, 1.0 started with Columbus setting sail in 1492 with his three ships.  Shrinking the world from large to medium then came 2.0 that was from1800 to 2000 where it shrank again from medium to small.  The key factors in this era were the multinational companies and advancements like the steam engine, telegraph, phones, PCs, etc.  Finally was globalization 3.0 which differs from 1 and 2 in that it empowered the individual to be able to do everything that was done by the big multinational companies from 2.0 with the help of programs like Netscape.