Did Friedman overlook any crucial 'flatteners'? If you were to add an eleventh one, what would it be?

Frankly speaking, Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat was nothing short of a monumental masterpiece in its time (2005). His concept of the Ten Flatteners incisively captured how our world was being progressively "flattened" from the late 20th century into the early 21st. Insights into concepts like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dot-com bubble, outsourcing, offshoring, and supply chains were remarkably prescient then.

However, even Friedman himself likely couldn’t fully anticipate the breakneck speed of global change. If we’re to critique what he missed, it wasn’t a failure to see—it’s that some “flatteners” were merely construction carts at the time; no one foresaw them transforming into the behemoths they are today.

So Friedman wasn’t "wrong"—it’s that at his moment of writing, the Eleventh Flattener hadn’t yet revealed its full force.

If I were to add that Eleventh Flattener, it would undeniably be:

#11: The Ubiquitous “Cloud + Mobile” Platform

Let me explain this in plain terms.

Friedman’s tenth flattener was “The Steroids”, where he grouped technologies like wireless and mobile devices, framing them as “enhancers” for the previous nine.

But in my view, this falls painfully short. The combined force of mobile devices (the “mobile end”) and cloud computing (the “cloud”) has outgrown its role as a mere enhancer. It’s now an entirely new, independently colossal flattener of unprecedented power.

Break it down this way:

“Mobile”: Refers to the smartphone in your pocket. When Friedman wrote his book, Nokia feature phones were the norm. The iPhone wasn’t born until 2007. The revolution of the smartphone lies in cramming a powerful computer, HD camera, GPS locator, payment terminal… essentially all tools into everyone’s pocket. It gave billions worldwide—whether in a New York skyscraper or an African village—a “universal key” to access the digital realm. The scale of this key distribution is historically unparalleled.
“Cloud”: If smartphones are keys, the cloud is the entire realm behind the door. Previously, building a website required buying servers and dedicated lines at astronomical costs. Cloud computing (like AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Azure) acts as a “computational power plant.” You don't build your own power station; just pay-as-you-go for seemingly limitless computing power and storage. It slashed startup costs from hundreds of thousands down to the price of a few cups of coffee.

What synergy did “Cloud + Mobile” unleash?

This fused flattener bulldozed antiquated business models and global connectivity paradigms. It birthed phenomena we now take for granted:

The Exponential Rise of the Gig Economy:
- Without smartphone Apps (“mobile”) and the cloud’s powerful backend coordination, giants like Uber, DiDi, Airbnb, or Meituan Waimai wouldn't exist. Anyone can leverage spare time, a car, or a spare room to become a service provider. This created hundreds of millions of flexible jobs globally.
The Age of Ubiquitous User-Generated Content:
- Professional cameras and editing teams were once essential for video creation. Now, one smartphone (“mobile”) handles filming and editing, while platforms like TikTok, YouTube, or Bilibili (“cloud”) distribute it globally. Everyone is a potential journalist, director, or star. This demolished the traditional media and entertainment industries.
Global Proliferation of Mobile Payments:
- In China, Alipay and WeChat Pay surpassed credit card ubiquity. A phone (“mobile”) plus the cloud-based payment ecosystem made cash nearly obsolete. This model is exporting worldwide, further flattening financial barriers.
Seamless Borderless Collaboration:
- While Friedman mentioned workflow software, “Cloud + Mobile” makes remote work frictionless. Tools like Slack, Zoom, or Tencent Meeting (“cloud”), accessed via any device (“mobile”), proved during the pandemic that they could sustain a massive global knowledge-based workforce.

In Summary:

Friedman’s first ten flatteners dealt primarily with top-down flattening at the corporate and national level—shifting factories offshore (e.g., China) or outsourcing services (e.g., India to India).

The Eleventh Flattener I propose—The Ubiquitous “Cloud + Mobile” Platform—embodies a bottom-up, democratic flattening that empowers every individual. It places potent tools for creation, communication, and commerce directly into the hands of billions globally. It doesn’t just make the world “flatter”; it equips countless ordinary people with personal bulldozers in their hands, enabling them to dismantle barriers themselves and participate directly in global competition and collaboration.

The transformative depth and disruptive power of this force fully qualify it as an independent, potentially paramount, Eleventh Flattener.