The beginning of the twenty-first
century will be remembered, Friedman argues, not for military conflicts or political events,
but for a whole new age of globalization - a ''flattening'' of the
world. The explosion of advanced technologies now means that suddenly knowledge pools and resources have connected all over the planet, levelling the playing field as never before, so that each of us is potentially an equal - and competitor - of the other. The rules of the game have changed forever - but does this ''death of distance'', which requires us all to run faster in order to stay in the same place, mean the world has got too small and too flat too fast for us to adjust?