The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

I have been wanting to write my own review on this book for a while now as i went through the reading process. I finally got done with it today and so here i go. A bit of a background, Thomas Friedman  is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and foreign policy expert, he was the Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent for the New York Times and currently writes weekly op-editorials for the Times. He wrote the book The Lexus and the Olive Tree  which became a international best-seller and a textbook for International Political Science on campuses around the world. The Olive Tree gave an introduction to the  changing world during this era of globalization. This book moves onto a totally different level.

Friedman writes in a very casual way making it a easy to read . He writes as if he is speaking to you, which make his columns as well as his books fun to read. His years as the foreign affairs correspondent make him an expert in world politics. His columns have been a must read for me for the past three years (in India you can read him in the Indian Express) and i would recommend them to everyone. They provide a great insight into American and World politics. Now, moving on to the book.

The cover says it all, the world is flat, of course not in the physical sense but with development of technology and the era of Internet. There are no walls keeping people apart and the world is changing rapidly. By walls he means political and trade barriers which are falling each day as this world becomes a tinier place. Friedman calls this era Globalization 3.0', therefore, G 1.0 was the era when Columbus(1492) set sail till 1800, where it was more about countries and muscles. Countries and governments shrank the size of the world from large to medium. G 2.0 lasted from 1800 till 2000, the dynamic agent here were the multinational companies which again shrunk the world to a size small. Thus, 3.0 shrinks the world from small to tiny, where the individual is the driving force behind the collapsing walls. This era makes it possible for more people to plug and play.

He explains the '10 flatteners' which led to this flat world, starting with launch of Windows 3.0 months after the Berlin Wall collapsed to the day when Netscape went public and its open sourcing, China's entry in to WTO to the last one which is wireless technology. I am just naming these flatteners, as you read you understand how they all add up. But, one of the most interesting facts he points out to is that one of the results of the Dot-com bubble was the over-investment of a Trillion dollars in fibre-optimizing the world, which lets Bangalore be right next to Boston, lets Dalian (China) be next door neighbors with Detroit. It made the cost of communicating next to nothing. His essential point, which he loves to make in his interviews is that 35 years ago if you had a choice between being a B-student in Boston or being a genius in China, you would have picked Boston. But, today you wouldn't necessarily do that since the genius in China has a better chance at being successful. He essentially addresses America by pointing out the falling education standards in United States, and how students from China and India are overtaking American students. The need for Americans to pull up their socks and get back in the knowledge race, if America wants to remain the leaders in innovation. Since, China and India are both racing U.S to the top. He also addresses the part of the world which is not moving ahead, the unflat word- Africa and the Middle East.

Friedman is often criticized as being too optimistic, i would not concur with that assessment. There is no denying that the man presents a optimistic outlook of the world, however he balances it out with the negative realities of this flat world.  He is not presenting the future, he is telling you whats going on in the world right now. A flat world faced with collapsing walls which create opportunities as well as nightmares such as terrorism. He warns not just Americans but everyone that if you don't keep up with this world, you will end up losing out as it becomes more and more competitive as more and more people plug and play. He argues that even if only 5% of populations freed by the collapsing walls make use of this flat world, it is still 150 million which is nearly the size of the American work-force. A good chunk of this book is essentially meant for Americans not that its not interesting but it deals with problems facing the American work-force regarding outsourcing, off-shoring etc. and the  possible solutions to some of the problems facing the American work-force.

I bought this book for two reasons because i loved the Olive Tree and because this book deals with India in a big way. The essential tools for his argument are India and China, which he uses very effectively to get his point across. The reader comes across so many Indian innovators and business leaders who are not only changing India, but its position in the world. Since, Friedman's essential argument is that this world is based around an individual therefore the book empowers through its message, which is that you don't need to immigrate to innovate. Even if you don't agree with his arguement, read this book for the information it provides about whats going on in the world. For example, Rajesh Rao, who runs a gaming company in India owns the rights to Charlie Chaplin's image on all cell phones or that HP does back-office work for the State Bank of India (yes the company that makes your printer is doing back office work for an Indian bank) or the supply chain network of Wall Mart (the most amazing thing you could see and learn, sure they are big evil monsters but heck of a company still) or the real business that UPS does (those guys in the brown shorts do a lot more than deliver packages) and the list goes on and on. This book is an amazing source of facts and information, some of which will blow the average mind, thereby making it a good read. So, pick up a copy and get to know our flat world.

Comments

[Nisha]

Thanks! I didn't know that his articles were in the Indian Express as well, and for free that too! I was starting to get frustrated by the NY Times' pay-for-archived-articles thingie. I'm adding this book to my must-reads after finals.

[Mahesh Khatri]

The World Is Not Flat.

It is full of Mountains and Valleys.

High Quality Low Cost Mountains and

Low Quality High Cost Valleys.

http://www.kaytek.co.in/owner/mk/blogs/2005/05/world-of-mountains-and-valleys.html

[Gaurav]

hey Jerry, get this book for me when you come to India next month.

[Ray Tapajna]

Thomas Friedman Flat World has a flat tire and he is one of the nails.
First of all his Flat World is not the same as a level playing field. This phrase has been used in the Globalization Free Trade debate as related to sports where there are checks and balances. One balance - the historical phrase - the balance of trade - does not exist in his mentality. As a matter of fact it seems all balances are left out and defintions are changed or given a meaning distant from the usual context.

For example, historically trade was based on trading products. One nation traded with another for something they did not have or produce. The major commodities being traded in Free Trade are human beings and the value of their labor. Workers are put on a world trading block to compete with the lowest levels of wages down to wage slave and even child labor. This is not a Flat World but a new kind of wage slave marketplace.

Elite groupings with people like Thomas Friedman a member, tell others how to live and what is happening etc without doing the walk. They do the talk but not the walk.

All hell breaks loose with Economics without borders or limitations. Human beings become the tool of a raw Capitalism which prompts a new kind of colonialism and imperialism in the old fashion meaning of words. Nations and international entities find their interest spread around the world and find they need to protect them for selfish reasons. There are no benevolent plantation owners as Friedman would like us to assume. He may think he is one.

Wars and terrorism have followed and we fight phrases instead of identities. We fight terrorism - a word . Nations and locations are blurred. The enemy is no where and everywhere with this war on terrorism in the era of forced Globalization and so called Free Trade.

As the old computer saying goes - "garbage in and garbage out" - if garbage is inputted than garbage is outputted. Friedman believes there is a factor that corrects this in just the process of doing it. What we have is the bad stuff splashed across the viewers screen in instant fashion. The world wide web is worst than the wild west was. Everything and anything goes. Try data farming on the world wide web and see what happens.

Friedman uses the example of the Y2k crisis and how India programmers came to the rescue. He does not tell us what caused the crisis. From about 1988 to 1998, millions of American workers in the computer industry lost their jobs. Mainframe systems were left to drift on a sea of errors with no one home to fix them or to do house keeping. This was due to the impact of Free Trade that came like a thief in the night. The Wall Street Journal did a story in about 1998 about this. They said companies were afraid to bring back the fired programmers and system people out of fear they would do more harm than good and sabotage the process.

At the same time, the last PC computer made in the USA was in about 1990. Most of all the Micro computer system houses that started up in the early 1980s were already vanquished by Free Trade. Literally thousands went out of business. Hundreds if computer manufacturers including industrial computer makers went out of business or faded away. The computer itself became a throw away item and still it was said to be the core of the class room. The parts came from the sweat shops of the world and we found that the computers were not the only throw aways. Human beings were too. The USA went through the most massive dislocation of workers in its history. The unemployment rate reporting did not match up with the reporting from the 1970s. The methods were changed to even include someone making only a $100 a month labeled as employed.
Friedman ignores all these transformations and put statistics out there as if they have been the same for a long time in his own historical fashion. With these fabrications, he fashions the new Flat World. Well the Flat World has flat tires and he is one of the nails. In the end, he is an arch-enemy of the common man and the common sense order of things.

For more information, see Tapart News and Art that Talks at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews
http://tapsearch.com/globalization
http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000636.html "communications by rank" --workers have no voice in the process of globalization even though they are the core of any economy.

[Jatin]

He has since come out with a updated version and ofcourse confessed that he got a bit carried away. In anycase, i still found the book a interesting read.