The Tenth Flattener - Steroids

Thomas Friedman has come up with ten forces that he's researched and believe have flattened the world. The tenth flattener really does put the icing on the cake, hence the term - steroids. These steroids are turbocharging and amplifying all the other flatteners. They're make it possible for all the others-outsourcing, supply chaining, offshoring, open-sourcing- to be done in a way that is "digital, mobile, virtual, and personal," as Carly Fiorina, former Hewlitt Packard CEO stated. In other words, these "enhancers" are allowing information to be transmitted over computers, satellites, the Internet, and fiber-optic cable for a digital effect. Virtually, information will be transmitted with complete ease and high efficiency. The mobile effect means that this information will be available to you anywhere, with any device, associating with whomever. And finally, these steroids allow you to do all of the transmitting on your own personal device. File sharing, multi-purpose devices like cell phones, laptops, and PDAS, and VoIP (voice over internet protocol) are the smaller pieces to the big picture. The one steroid that sets all the others off is Wireless. Wireless makes being digital, virtual, mobile, and personal all possible. As vice-president of Airespace Alan Cohen stated, "The natural state of communications is wireless." It's what we as humans do to achieve some level of normalcy. All of these steroids are amplifying the other forms of collaboration-the other nine flatteners. People have to do less and less physically to accomplish anything. They're able to work and communicate with anything, from anywhere to anywhere. There are less limits as to what can be accomplished.
Friedman sums up the effect that the tenth flattener has had on us: "Engines talking to computers, talking to people, talking back to the engines, followed by people talking to people-all done from anywhere to anywhere." This is exactly what happens when the other flatteners are enchanced, or turbo-charged by steroids.