In the history of computing why is the Internet one of the most significant technological advances?

In Thomas
Friedman's breakthrough book
The World is Flat,
chapter 2 talks
about
"The Ten Forces that Flattened the World".

• The
  breaking of the Berlin Wall
• World Wide
  Web/Netscape


• Productivity Software


• Up/Downloading


• Advertising online


• Offshoring


• Outsourcing


• Insourcing
• Steroids, or
  portability of
  technology

Although the ten forces are listed

chronologically, the first two major events are extrapolated and compared as to their
influence
in the advent of globalization.

These events are
the breaking of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 and the advent of the Internet in
1995. The breaking of the Berlin Wall, though is
by no means THE most
important event to ever occur, is certainly anfor what was to come: here we

see the elimination of a physical boundary that would result in the final connection
between two
worlds that, despite of originating from the same race and
ethnicity,  had alienated each other.
East and West
Germany...