The Internet/Web needs to get over the do-it-my-way-or-the-highway approach. The first billion users of the Internet and the Web can be expected to make do with English. That's not reality in the rest of the world. The second billion users of the Internet are in India and China, many of them rural and speaking a variety of different languages. Rather than viewing this as the end of the flat world, the developed world should view this as an opportunity to sell to the 2nd and 3rd billion users. If we don't, somebody will and it be the end of the developed world's hold on the Internet and the web.

Let the U.S. not make the same mistakes Great Britain made the beginning of the 20th century. The sun never set on that empire at that time and it was hubris and complacency. Same thing is true for the Americans. This century, if we get into nationalism and Balkanization, we will be the losers. Where's the American Spirit, the innovation and the can do attitude? Or are they only fair weather ideas to be discarded at the first sign of trouble?

The 2nd and 3rd billion consumers are in the developing world. Either we can slink away like cowards or make stuff the rest of the world needs!

Unless a country is blocking access to other top level domains, I see nothing wrong with having more top level domains. In fact, it's good to have domain top level domains by content type so that it's easier to segregate (.tv;.net;.org...)

The article stated the obvious: we like to receive the information (especially entertainment) in our cultural context of choice. Cultural barriers will always exist. And this is not the language issue. Just compare the original British version of the TV show "The Office" with its mawkish American version.

If anyone thinks the Internet will squish itself into a nonviable vertical statue (as opposed to Friedman's horizontal Flat World) just because some countries' governments are attempting to reassemble the Iron Curtain, they've got another thing coming.

Do you really think the open-source-enabled Web geniuses will be kept out of nationalistic Web sites simply because the URL extensions have a few exotic characters in them?

Fear not ye fools that blanche in the face of the new and unfamiliar !!

Ten or 20 years ago, keyboards for Asian languages were considered hopeless.

Now, we are concerned about language curtains Balkanizing the Internet, since Latin letters (with diacritical accent marks added as needed) are no longer the universal alphabet for URLs.

Face it, if we need it, our technology has reached the capability and capacity to support a semblance of a meaningful transliteration among the written languages of this World.

After all, even among the languages using the Latin alphabet with common roots, the meaning of text is already highly Balkanized, since much is obscured merely by differences of phraseology and common usage. Indeed, in Brooklyn, communication between some neighboring city blocks is all but impossible.

On the other hand, again, the technology is still advancing. Ridiculous concepts like Star Trek's universal translators—may be just a little way around the corner, hidden only by the vagaries of future wisps and whims—no longer by impenetrable barriers of unknowable complexity.

If I am not mistaken, all the written characters in Chinese and many (if not all other) languages have been encoded in Unicode, almost a prerequisite, I think, for having keyboards in each language.

Each language's rules of construction and local and extended interpretation, are being analyzed, documented, and encoded.

Perhaps the next theoretical step will be to characterize the inherent internalized language structure and process (as Prof. Ray Jackendoff might call it) that exists in the mind of each human being and, I suggest, in some form or degree, in every sentient entity conceivable.

But meanwhile, dynamic, spatial, diagrammatical —visual and/or auditory and/or even tactile —tools might short cut the paths to interlingual communication with deep awareness and understanding.

Anyway, that choice, or variety, of alphabets in a minor mismatch in the gears, easily overcome by tools that will become available on the same computer networks that are now supposedly threatened by Balkanization of the alphabets used for domain specification.

The real Balkanization is deeper, affected more or less by every variation in background, language, philosophy, attitude, age, beliefs, and even by the mere physical distinction and separation between any two people. But that too, hopefully securing continued individual rights to privacy and independent existence, will be overcome—sooner, I think, rather than later— but overcome nonetheless.

Keep up the communication in forums and concomitant dialogs.

The rest will follow from the need and desire by everyone interested.

Uh-huh. Perhaps countries like China or Saudi Arabia will do this for the general public to restrict access for average citizens. But I do not see how any business seeking to be successful will restrict access to English-only speakers and systems. But I will watch and see.

I do not see anything wrong with adding more top-level domains. There will always be some way to access or distribute information that is tried to be hidden or blocked by governments or third parties. The simple yet vicious cycle of trying to restrict people's rights and then trying to free them again will always continue.

Even Friedman toward the end of his book admits he was being rather sensationalist in discussing his views on The World Is Flat.

Your observations and commentary noted are actually a bit refreshing because to a certain extent his main message is a wake-up call to the developed world: Stay competitive; keep fit; be efficient; invest in your people, in education; deliver real value; be innovative!

Some may see his book within the context of Chicken Little: "The sky is falling!" But it is not falling; it may get dark, but there will surely be sunny days for all of us.

I wrote the following post a while back, referring to Friedman as well; maybe it applies to this situation.

http://centerchannel.typepad.com/sap/2007/05/the_world_is_fl.html

To view Friedman as technologist is really to fail to see that the emperor has no clothes. Global ties, to use his phrase, have always been self-serving for the parties involved. It is silly though to think that the Internet and use of electronic data flow is a critical factor that has stimulated the flows of capital and goods.

This tearing down of trade barriers to benefit less than 1 percent of the world's population (though 100 percent of Friedman's equally wealthy friends and family) has nothing to do with the growth of the Internet, anymore than the use of EDI contributes to trade imbalances with China. Governments "meddle" to protect business interests as with tariff law, tax law, and of course, armed intervention in the Philippines, Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Honduras, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Panama, Iran, Lebanon, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and soon Iran again. Friedman and his ilk only object to government activities from which they cannot profit.

Friedman is an interesting individual, with personal wealth that puts him in the top 400 in this country [Editor's Note: his wife is Ann Bucksbaum, a shopping center heiress, according to published reports], even if like Sen. McCain he acquired the old fashioned way; he married into it. It really warps Friedman's perspective. Friedman and his circle of people of wealth, profit enormously from the use of offshore capital and raw materials, energy, and labor, to produce products for sale into the U.S.A., with the profits also safely held offshore in hedge funds where they are not taxed. Anything that rocks their boat prompts a quick attack.

To the extent that Friedman perceives the Internet as being used to promote the economic independence of other nations, this potential loss of control is to be feared. Easy and relatively cheap to buy a president and a Congress in the U.S.A., and even a couple of Supreme Court justices. It is not so easy to buy off the rulers of these regimes which have no interest in adding to the wealth of Friedman and friends.

Control over local Web access by totalitarian governments in China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia is a wholly expected extension of their other efforts to exercise control over every aspect of their citizens lives and to brutally suppress dissent. American industrialists/capitalists throughout the history of this country have been (and still are) much more likely to support totalitarian regimes than democracies, and to provide the funds and tools and weapons that are used by the ruling elite to maintain control over the people.

There has long been a "global" economy in the sense of the elite of one country dominating and extracting the resources of other countries. The Internet has not altered this in any way in its relatively short existence anymore than the development of the printing press which provided the potential for the flow of knowledge, but even this flow has been easily suppressed by governments as well.

Just because one may have to use different keyboards or Latin character transliteration programs to access some Web sites, it is patently incorrect to state that the Internet world will no longer be "flat." It will remain flat when the people who require to access those Web sites learn that language or at least learn to use the keyboards and/or transliteration programs. Even now, many people in India are using Latin keyboards to generate documents in a multitude of regional languages.

The article seems to get the issue confused, by equating globalization and the "flat world" with a primarily English language based Internet. Why is one indicative or the result of the other?

Additions of more domain levels and languages are in fact signs of maturity and growth of nations, that is driving up demand for information access and sharing across a much larger population base. It does not create balkanization, but actually enhances the global presence of the Internet.

The original topic was about nationalism and whether that is going to reverse globalization. While there might be a case that there is evidence of rising nationalistic feelings, that should be attributable to the desire of each participating nation to protect their own interests. These nations are getting educated and investing in their knowledge base and infrastructure and now demand a level playing field in the global theater. It can be expected that these developing nations will not simply yield to the Global companies, which are really powerhouses of advanced nations.

The World Is Flat provided interesting insights, but suffered from a variety of common analytical mistakes. First of all, it assumed that there was a limitless supply of over educated Indians, Chinese and other third-world folks willing to work for very low wages. It also assumed that trends were established and non-revocable, thus failing to appreciate that feedback loops, just like manufacturing, had also gone global. Linear projections are the most common mistakes made by intelligent observers, who see relatively short-term trends as long-term historical drivers.

Another serious mistake in the book is the assumption that a new, semi-homogenic global culture would emerge that will embrace the Internet and its technologies, adopt its underlying paradigms and throw away the obsolete. This assumption ignores the power of culture and the human need to belong. Along with promoting its own set of cultural paradigms, the Internet threatened what most people have traditionally valued most, their sense of belonging the community of their parents, a quaint notion in the US, but a reality in much of the world.

After reading The World Is Flat and discussing its implications with leaders in academia, business and government, we wrote an internal piece called The World Is Bumpy, which reflected what we found to be a more realistic perspective. In this context, the Internet creates virtual flat spaces within a three dimensional world that is anything but flat. In fact, after talking to leaders in business, academia and government, we concluded that to effectively compete and succeed, business would have to move beyond its two traditional dimensions of Competition and Performance. In other words, a case can be made that before the Internet, the world, as seen from the First World, was in fact flatter than it is today.

As far as what governments are doing, their motivations will be as diverse as those who surf the net. Some will want to protect their base of power; others will want to protect the culture or cultures that give unique expression to their nations; a third group may look at it in terms of protecting their industrial base. The motivations will be different, but the effect will be to make the World Wide Web less dependent on the cultures, languages and underlying paradigms of those who gave it birth and shaped it during its infancy. Ultimately, we should remember that our world has been, is and will remain fundamentally human and non-virtual.