The World Is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-first Century

published	April 6th 2006 by Penguin Books Ltd
binding	Paperback
isbn	0141022728 (isbn13: 9780141022727)
pages	624
description	Updated Edition: Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat,...more [close] Updated Edition: Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to. What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.) Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his story after his book's release and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What's changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition--on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain--are largely unaltered. Instead, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls "uploading," the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the "New Middle" class. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. --Tom Nissley <p clear="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="cc6600">Where Were You When the World Went Flat?</font> Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we've now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?") And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he's made in "The World Is Flat 2.0," including his response to parents who said to him, "Great, Mr. Friedman, I'm glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?" <p clear="left"> <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="cc6600">The Essential Tom Friedman</font> </!-- begin3pak --> <table cellpadding="4" border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="4"> <tr class="tiny" valign="top" align="center"> <td> From Beirut to Jerusalem</td> <td> The Lexus and the Olive Tree</td> <td> Longitudes and Attitudes</td> </tr> </table> </!-- end6pak --> <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="cc6600">More on Globalization and Development</font> <table cellpadding="4" border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="4"> <tr class="tiny" valign="top" align="center"> <td> China, Inc. by Ted Fishman</td> <td> Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz</td> <td> The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs</td> </tr> <tr class="tiny" valign="top" align="center"> <td> Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz</td> <td> The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli</td> <td> The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto</td> </tr> </table> [close]
date added	05-12-07 edit book

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Tabitha rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

05/15/08

bookshelves: blog, reviewed

Read in March, 2007

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. is an interesting book by Thomas Friedman. I read this book shortly after I returned from Thailand. As such, my view of the book is different than it may have been. I do not share all of his views regarding globalization, but I am glad that I read this book. Also, this was a year ago so it has already become a part of a mass of information gathered from other books (inside of my head). That is why I decided to go back and revie...more

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David added it (review of isbn 0312425074)

04/23/08

Heads in the sand should read this book!: This began as a response to one of the harsh reviews previously posted, but I figured it'd be just as good as a counterbalance in the review section. Using an approach the layman can understand, Friedman chronicles an event which took place (the flattening of the world, so to speak) right under our noses. He gives an excellent overview of how globalization really HAS helped the world, and he does it via plenty of footnoted resear...more Heads in the sand should read this book!: This began as a response to one of the harsh reviews previously posted, but I figured it'd be just as good as a counterbalance in the review section. Using an approach the layman can understand, Friedman chronicles an event which took place (the flattening of the world, so to speak) right under our noses. He gives an excellent overview of how globalization really HAS helped the world, and he does it via plenty of footnoted research into actual events that took place to get us to this point in history. Commerce (or consumption, if you'd rather) is, whether you like to admit it or not, the backbone of ALL successful societies (you know, the ones that aren't still tearing themselves apart over dark age religions and living in sandy hellholes). Sure, it comes with a price, but what doesn't? The fight to stem global warming will no doubt come with a price (higher priced hybrid cars and other associated costs of being "green"), but in the end, our descendants will live vastly different lives centuries from now because of it. I'm sure the Negative Nellies here would be the first people to point fingers at how little the people in Chinese factories are paid (especially in light of the recent toy scandals), but don't want to know what options they had before they had those supposedly "lousy" factory jobs. Oh, that's right, they had NO options. The very fact that Friedman addresses the dark side of globalization in the book (and in related audio programs and interviews he's done over the last year or more) should indicate that he's well aware of the fall-out, but knows it's inevitable AND surmountable as more and more countries develop a middle class, even if it's a middle class build on knock-offs like China's. But with higher standards being slowly forced upon them as an exporter, the benefit will be higher standards of living for their people, and less reliance on the bootleg. The forces are already in play to legitimize much of what Friedman has outlined in the book, and so much the better we'll all be for it. It's not about how much we can consume, although boy can we North Americans consume, and we wanted to do it for less money, and now look where all our manufacturing jobs have gone. But don't worry, there will always be an infrastructure in place in western countries, and while some business goes overseas, new business springs up. Even a service-based economy is still an economy. But now former third world countries and/or failed dictator states are finally being given the opportunity that they could not possibly have taken before due to doomed philosphies: they can begin to think globally and come out of the dark ages, where once the only "saviour" someone believed they needed was spoonfed to them from birth, but really only an internal salve against raging poverty and/or oppression. THAT's the only useful function of most religions and many political systems, but that's another book altogether. THIS book is about something that is too big to suddenly stop because we fear for future generations. Instead, we have to find ways to make what already works, work better, so that future generations from ALL walks of life and from ALL countries can partake in better economies, and freer societies. Loathe globalization all you want, but in this day and age, and probably for many more ages to come, COMMERCE will be the major way to guarantee progress. Goodness knows, politics and religion have tried and failed repeatedly, so why NOT let the marketplace dictate progress. It works, and it's flaws can be corrected, as they are in all good sciences; it just takes time. And, if you're bummed out, as "Casca" appears to be in another review, that you couldn't start your own airline, you've missed the point again. The point is that we now live in a world that's more connected than at any point in the history of mankind, and we're only going to become MORE connected as time goes on. If you have the capabilities of utilizing that connectivity to further your own business plans, creativity, social life, knowledge, you'd be a fool not to give it a try. Hell, even the terrorists have done it! It's not about running down to your bank for $100 million loans. It's about seeing the world, and your place in it-particularly if your business is BUSINESS and actually making a decent living-being made better with the technology that's at your fingertips. The one's who are sticking their heads in the sand are the ones who can't fathom that the world flattened, as Friedman says, while they were sleeping....less

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kadath rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

01/25/08

bookshelves: could-not-finish, non-fiction

recommends it for: people with no conscience

I started and never finished this book.

From the Amazon review:

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. ... Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. ...more I started and never finished this book.

From the Amazon review:

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. ... Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well.

One, duh. Two, Friedman really likes exclamation points! When discussing the most trivially obvious things! There's a user-created online encyclopedia called Wikipedia! Kids these days prefer playing sports video games to watching sports! The sky...it's blue! Commonplaces are presented with the aura of revelation, making me suspect that I am not in the target audience for this book. (His descriptions of technology are also painfully bad. Sometimes he explains acronyms and sometimes he doesn't. He just seems so proud of himself for learning what TCP/IP is for, but it's like watching your parents use the Web.)

The larger problem I'm having, however, is with his unscrutinized corporate cheerleading. He talks about the miracles of outsourcing and how a company can hire an Indian programmer in Bangalore for a fraction of what you'd pay an American, and hire a Chinese programmer for a fraction of what you'd pay an Indian. What he doesn't mention at all is the history of colonization that makes this economic disparity possible, or the fact that the wage pyramid is supported at every level by the mass of people doing worse on the bottom. The only discordant note is his paean to globalization is a mention that American workers will have to adjust to the new economy--but he even phrases this as an exciting new opportunity. He quotes a letter from Reuters's global managing editor, David Schlesinger, sent to the company when Reuters was about to fire a quarter of the staff to outsource to India:

...It's certainly difficult for for individuals to think about "their" work going away, being done thousands of miles away by someone being paid thousands of dollars less per year. But it's time to think about the opportunity as well as the pain, just as it's time to think about the obligations of off-shoring as well as the opportunities ... Every person, just as every corporation, must tend to his or her own economic destiny, just as our parents and grandparents in the mills, shoe shops, and factories did.

I would just like to take this moment to say: David Schlesinger, you are a douchebag, and I hope you go bald and discover your skull has ugly bumps and chicken pox scars.

Anyway, Friedman is so intent on the capitalist perspective that the vast injustice of the corporate system is invisible to him. His delight at discovering Wikipedia completely overshadows any analysis of just who benefits from the so-called flatness of the world--certainly not Reuters's American former employees. It's good for the Indian workers, at least on the short term, but they are already being seen as too pricey, and corporations are looking toward cheaper labor pools in China. Will it be Africa when the Chinese become seen as too expensive to employ? Reuters is apparently benefiting, but what is Reuters? A legal fiction, made into an entity in the reader's mind by linguistic slight of hand. In the end, the only people who win are Reuters's upper management and stockholders, and only the top few of those see any substantial benefit.

And that was just 100 or so pages in. I gave Friedman another 200 pages to grow a social conscience. He didn't, and I stopped reading....less

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Schnaucl rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

09/24/07

bookshelves: library, non-fiction, read_2007

Read in March, 2007

The premise is that due in large part to technology the world is becoming flatter. Thomas Friedman clearly thinks this is a great thing with very few drawbacks. In fact, he doesn't address any drawback except in passing (other than the random aside that terrorists can use the Internet to network too) until the penultimate chapter.

This is clearly meant to be a book about how globalization affects the individual. Friedman tries to show ...more The premise is that due in large part to technology the world is becoming flatter. Thomas Friedman clearly thinks this is a great thing with very few drawbacks. In fact, he doesn't address any drawback except in passing (other than the random aside that terrorists can use the Internet to network too) until the penultimate chapter.

This is clearly meant to be a book about how globalization affects the individual. Friedman tries to show this by sharing anecdotes and interviews but nearly every single person he talks to and every story he shares is about a founder or head of a company and the few that aren't deal with people who are no more than 3 levels from the top of the company. Hardly "everyman." The book has a lot to say about what CEOs and entrepreneurs can do to stay competitive (mainly keep innovating, not exactly a new idea) but there is very little about what the rest of us can do besides "continue to try to make ourselves employable."

He proposes that companies make sure their employees are employable and in return employees give their loyalty. This seems unrealistic given today’s business climate.

He views the Internet as a great leveling force, but mentions the censorship in China only in passing and doesn’t discuss how it affects his theory. I believe he thinks the situation is temporary but as major companies seem happy to cooperate with filtering, I don't see change in the near future.

Friedman is also very big on the idea of globalization as an economic equalizer. He goes on at length about how it's a force for good because it dramatically raises the standard of living in developing nations, particularly India, but it isn't until the penultimate chapter that he admits that's only true for about 2% of India's population. And while he's busy talking about what a great opportunity it is in terms of income and how Indians no longer have to emigrate to have a much improved standard of living and that even those abroad can have access to hometown newspapers ,etc. he doesn't seem to realize the contradiction when he mentions a man who started an elementary school for India's Untouchable class, hoping to prove that with the right education they can be just like the higher castes but who then must to move elsewhere after they are educated because their last name reveals their caste. While he was trying to argue that the Internet will eventually bring more income equality it seemed to me that it made the rich richer and the poor were still left behind. (And never a word about the exponential difference between CEOs and the lowest paid employee). It’s good that high caste Indians have a better standard of living but we're still seeing the standards improve for the people at the top and not much change for everyone else.

He talks about Wal-Mart’s "just in time" model of business and in his penultimate chapter he does address some of the problems. A global supply chain can be decimated by war, disease, or natural disaster and if things are only delivered "just in time" companies can be completely screwed. The advantage of this is that it makes countries think twice about going to war (specifically countries like India/Pakistan and China/Taiwan) because they know if they screw up the global supply chain companies will be extremely wary of ever investing in that country again. But Friedman extols the virtues of Wal-Mart's use of RFID technology without mentioning the concerns of privacy advocates.

I think one of Friedman's biggest failings is that so much of the book is about the Internet as a great equalizer and there is not one word about Net Neutrality. The book was updated, revised and re released in April of 2006 so Net Neutrality was a known issue.

Having said all of that, the book was still an interesting read. I learned a lot of random things about various companies. ...less

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Alex rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

03/06/08

bookshelves: books-read-in-2007

Read in August, 2007

THE WORLD IS FLAT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (RELEASE 3.0) BY THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Thomas Friedman is a well known columnist for the New York Times and the person to turn to for answer’s about this country’s economy and where it’s headed. The premiere hardcover edition of The World is Flat hit the bookshelves in April of 2006, and in that time it has gone through a second edition in hardcover, and finally a third edition in both paperback and hardcover. Friedman’s excuse...more THE WORLD IS FLAT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (RELEASE 3.0) BY THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Thomas Friedman is a well known columnist for the New York Times and the person to turn to for answer’s about this country’s economy and where it’s headed. The premiere hardcover edition of The World is Flat hit the bookshelves in April of 2006, and in that time it has gone through a second edition in hardcover, and finally a third edition in both paperback and hardcover. Friedman’s excuse for updating is that the world is constantly changing, necessitating further chapters in his book. One wonders if there may be a “Release 4.0” in the paperback; only time and our ever-changing present will tell. Nevertheless, The World is Flat is a truly unique book, whether it be for a student of economics, or a person looking for answers to why outsourcing is getting so out of control.

Friedman begins with an introduction to how he discovered that the world had become flat; noticing details here and there in his travels around the world, and then putting it all together. He then leads into his ten forces that flattened the world, explaining how they came to be, what effect they had on the “flattening” of the world, and how some are continuing to do so. These include two important dates: 11/9/89, which was when the Berlin Wall came down and eastern Europe and Russia joined the rest of the world once again; and 8/9/95 when Netscape first released its browser to computer owners, allowing them to surf this new thing called the Internet. Friedman hits every important step in the way business has changed in the last three decades: from Wal-Mart’s ingenuity in supply-chaining, leading to the incredible system whereby a product is purchased at a Wal-Mart store sending a message to the supplier which immediately starts making another copy of that product; to software development in its original free form with LINUX; to the light speed development of sites like MySpace, Facebook, and online blogs where everyone has a voice; to the existence of large buildings in places like Bangalore, India, housing thousands of customer service representatives helping American customers thousands of miles away with anything from credit card bills to cellphone technical questions.

With these ten factors serving as a basis for how and why the world has become flattened, Friedman takes the reader on a trip around the world, elucidating exactly why when we call for help now, the chances of getting a person with an accent who’s native language isn’t English are incredibly high. But isn’t this what America is all about? Perhaps not, when the person you are talking to is on the other side of the world, and that this is somehow cheaper and better for the company you are calling that using an American citizen who could be just a few miles away. While Friedman does have some answers, it is clear that America and the world is at a turning point, much like the beginning of the twentieth century when there was the roaring beast of industrialization, and the explosion of the assembly-line system of the Model T Ford. One can certainly expect more from Friedman in the coming years, as new and inconceivable changes happen before our very eyes. For now, The World is Flat is the only guidebook we have, and it does its job to a T.

For more reviews, and writings, or to buy yourself a copy, please visit www.alexctelander.com....less

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Punk rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

08/22/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in January, 2006

Non-Fiction. Friedman explains to us, over and over, how globalization has effectively turned the world into a very very small place -- I was okay with his metaphor of a flat world at first, but over time it started to irritate me. It's neither elegant nor practical. No matter how many virtual conference rooms you have, in a flat world it's still going to take forever to get material goods moved from China to the US, unlike our current round model; later he even starts to talk about how some par...more Non-Fiction. Friedman explains to us, over and over, how globalization has effectively turned the world into a very very small place -- I was okay with his metaphor of a flat world at first, but over time it started to irritate me. It's neither elegant nor practical. No matter how many virtual conference rooms you have, in a flat world it's still going to take forever to get material goods moved from China to the US, unlike our current round model; later he even starts to talk about how some parts of the world are unflat, ow, my head -- but still, his point remains: digitization, miniaturization, virtualization, and personalization have conspired to make our planet very small indeed, metaphorically speaking. For the most part, Friedman has a highly romanticized view of globalization, looking at it as more of a fascinating academic theory than a real force, and only talking to people who have benefited from the rampant outsourcing and supply-chaining.

The first two thirds of this book suffer from a distinct lack of real world consequence. It's all happy anecdotes and economic theory, which isn't exactly Friedman's strong point. Because of this, it took me about six months to read, was constantly inspiring me to nap, and was just generally twice as long as it needed to be. Friedman makes up a lot of jargon -- going as far as to repurpose common words for his own oblique purposes -- and it can be difficult to remember what he's talking about at any given moment. The other problem is Friedman's scope and focus. When I read non-fiction, I like each chapter to have a thesis. Friedman prefers to wander up and down the page, make the same point several times, dump a lot of irrelevant statistics on me, and then scurry off to deliver a glancing blow to a new perspective, only to doggedly return to his original thrice-made point as if I hadn't gotten it the first two times.

But, if you can make it through all that, cold hard reality shows up in the third act and things finally get interesting. Friedman admits that only .2% of Indians are employed in the technological industry he was so happily touting just a few chapters before. He admits that the world is not entirely flat, and that it may never become fully flat due to poverty, war, or simple fear. He talks about the ramifications of a flat world, the ways it can go wrong, how terrorist networks take advantage of the same readily available work force and supply chain that Dell or Infosys does. He takes the first two thirds of the book and puts it into context. This part I read in just three days. This is the part I can use. Globalization isn't just about Americans losing jobs. It's so much bigger than that. It's about the flow of information, about vulnerability and anger, about global responsibility. Those last hundred and fifty pages were worth struggling through the first three hundred, but only highlight how The World is Flat is more mishmash than structured thesis.

This gets two stars for the first two-thirds of the book and four stars for the last third, giving it an average of three stars....less

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Rick rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

05/12/07

Read in May, 2007

You know that middle-class American dream you think you and your kids are entitled to? Now you have to really work for it, and work really smart.

There's a whole new set of rules that are both a challenge and an opportunity. ... No, really.

Ten forces have combined in the past 20 years to make it much easier for anyone to start a business and/or collaborate with anyone else in the world: 1. The fall of the Berlin Wall (and the resulting addition of all of Eastern Europe and Russia to the w...more You know that middle-class American dream you think you and your kids are entitled to? Now you have to really work for it, and work really smart.

There's a whole new set of rules that are both a challenge and an opportunity. ... No, really.

Ten forces have combined in the past 20 years to make it much easier for anyone to start a business and/or collaborate with anyone else in the world: 1. The fall of the Berlin Wall (and the resulting addition of all of Eastern Europe and Russia to the world market), 2. the rise of Netscape and HTML, 3. work flow software, 4. uploading, 5. outsourcing, 6. off-shoring, 7. supply-chaining, 8. in-sourcing (turning over aspects of your business to companies such as UPS), 9. informing (universal access to nearly all information via the Internet), and 10. a bunch of technological force multipliers.

What's more, in just the past few years, all of the gains promised by computing and the Internet have finally kicked in and accelerated as enough people trained to use them have come into the labor market and systems have become compatible.

There is a bigger and growing global economic pie for all to share and it is easier than ever to become an entrepreneur, but each of us doing knowledge work has to do it cheaper and better than everyone else in the world, or find something else to do. Even high-level software design, accounting and lawyering can be done from India now, thanks to a glut of cheap fiber-optic cable laid at the bottom of the ocean during the dot-com boom. China and Eastern Europe also have armies of hungry, increasingly well-educated people who want the good life and will work for it.

To protect yourself from losing your job to someone in another country, you can become a good collaborator or orchestrator, synthesize breakthroughs among fields to create new products and services, be a good explainer, be good at leveraging new technology to do things better and cheaper, become adaptable by continuously learning new skills, or just do a job that is intrinsically local, such as barbering or bar tending.

Alas, the U.S. may be in trouble. We're not training nearly enough scientists and technologists, and since 9/11, we're making it harder to import them. And today, if a good technologist or entrepreneur wants to be in the game, they don't have to come to the U.S. They can be a player from India or China. Americans are not as hungry and ambitious as people for whom a middle-class lifestyle only recently became dreamable. Also, our telecommunications infrastructure is not keeping pace with the rest of the world: Our broadband is "among the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world."

So, we need visionary leadership that will inspire us to build up our infrastructure, end our dependence on fossil fuels, educate our people and not let security concerns and trade barriers get in the way of the U.S. being an attractive place to set up shop.

Vote wisely in all elections....less

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Rick rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

01/13/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in December, 2006

The first big mistake I made was deciding to buy the 2.0 edition of the book (updated and expanded). Redundancy is one of the book’s signature features so updating and expanding it only compounds the sins of this feature. My second big mistake was deciding to finish reading it after first running aground about half way through and taking a several month sabbatical to read more worthy books. All right I’m being testy. It wasn’t such a big mistake. Friedman is a smart guy but way too full of...more The first big mistake I made was deciding to buy the 2.0 edition of the book (updated and expanded). Redundancy is one of the book’s signature features so updating and expanding it only compounds the sins of this feature. My second big mistake was deciding to finish reading it after first running aground about half way through and taking a several month sabbatical to read more worthy books. All right I’m being testy. It wasn’t such a big mistake. Friedman is a smart guy but way too full of himself, the book’s title is sufficient evidence of that—The World Is Flat, too cute and not up to the belaboring it gets—and the false (on three fronts) humility of the subtitle. The book isn’t brief and it is not a history, nor is there any humility in the pretend irony of “A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century”. Indeed there is no humility in this book that isn’t a pretence designed to cast the author’s brilliance in finer relief. And the man thinks he is Adam set loose in a new conceptual world where he is entitled to name anything and everything. You can run out of fingers and toes, even if you borrow those of friends and family, counting the times Friedman begins a sentence or phrase with a variation of “something I like to call…” I don’t know in the whole history of publishing if there is a writer who claimed coining so many phrases, the majority of which are as pedestrian as they come. It’s not just “flat world” and the concept of “flattening” or “the coefficient of flatness,” it’s “Globalization 1.0” and it’s 2.0 and 3.0 descendents, it’s “In-forming”, it’s “glocalization,” it’s, oh, why go on. This book had all the makings of an outstanding essay or two or three very good Sunday Times magazine features. It’s got the trends in business, technology, and perhaps culture and politics right. It’s by turns inspiring, scary, and tediously bloated. It is a wearying, self-promotional exercise in over and over re-stating what’s became obvious twelve anecdotes and 34 declarations ago. The best part of the book and, for me, it’s only enduring redeeming value is its bookmark, a Valentine’s Day card, handmade by my fiancée. But I don’t think that came with everyone’s copy....less

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Nicko rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

08/24/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: Americans

Everyone who considers themselves an American should read this.

Vern Elhers a vertiable voice in the wilderness

"While I understand the need to make hard choices in the face of fiscal constraint, I do not see the wisdom in putting science funding far behind other priorities. We have cut NSF despite the fact that this omnibus bill increases spending for the 2005 fiscal year, so clearly we could find room to grow basic research while maintaining fiscal constraint. But not only are we ...more Everyone who considers themselves an American should read this.

Vern Elhers a vertiable voice in the wilderness

"While I understand the need to make hard choices in the face of fiscal constraint, I do not see the wisdom in putting science funding far behind other priorities. We have cut NSF despite the fact that this omnibus bill increases spending for the 2005 fiscal year, so clearly we could find room to grow basic research while maintaining fiscal constraint. But not only are we not keeping pace with inflationary growth, we are actually cutting the portion basic research receives in the overall budget.

NSF has been praised as a model of administrative efficiency--over 95 percent of its funds go directly to support education and research programs. Former OMB director, Mitch Daniels, praised NSF as a model of administrative efficiency and called NSF one of the "true centers of excellence in this government" for its low overhead costs and efficient use of tax dollars. Furthermore, NSF has earned a reputation as the premiere basic research institution, despite receiving only 4 percent of the total federal research and development budget. I am concerned about the kind of message that we are sending by cutting funding of agencies, such as NSF, that succeed so well with already-lean budgets, while rewarding less-efficient agencies by increasing their funding.

This decision shows dangerous disregard for our nation's future, and I am both concerned and astonished that we would make this decision at a time when other nations continue to surpass our students in math and science and consistently increase their funding of basic research. We cannot hope to fight jobs lost to international competition without a well-trained and educated workforce. If we want to remain competitive in the international marketplace, we must provide funding that stimulates innovation and supports education. Within our borders, NSF supports technological innovation that has been, and remains, crucial to the sustained economic prosperity that America has enjoyed for several decades. This innovation is made possible, in large measure, by NSF support of basic scientific research, particularly in the physical sciences. Research at NSF not only underpins physical science research, but lays the foundation for work in the health sciences and medicine as well. Reducing this funding is extremely short-sighted."

The signs are starting to show.
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Manderson rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

05/04/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in May, 2008

I had been half-way through reading Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree, but I then had to return it to the library due to a move. I was then given this book by my father before I left, and I can tell that Friedman has done some maturing since his earlier work on globalization. In the Lexus and the Olive Tree, he was a wide-eyed globalization enthusiast, practica...more I had been half-way through reading Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree, but I then had to return it to the library due to a move. I was then given this book by my father before I left, and I can tell that Friedman has done some maturing since his earlier work on globalization. In the Lexus and the Olive Tree, he was a wide-eyed globalization enthusiast, practically gushing, and his name-dropping of interviewees often came off as braggadocious (I was having breakfast with the king of Thailand the other day. . .). However, what I did like about The Lexus and the Olive Tree is that Friedman took complicated subjects and delineated them very simply and powerfully. He takes this skill yet further on the subject of globalization in The World Is Flat, and his approach this time around is also much more sober, examining all aspects of our newly interconnected globe in a truly enlightening manner. I really enjoyed this book, and I feel that it is a must-read for anyone trying to get a grasp of what's going on in the world right now.

Some of his points really came through when I recently interviewed for a business that had its data scanned into a computer and sent to Beijing to be input into PDF forms during (our) night-time, as well as have receptionists located in their main office in Houston who transfer calls to their proper recipient in NY, Chicago, or Boston via an internet phone system. The world is indeed flattening, and we can see its effects not only in the realm of business, but also art, music, and culture. Those people and businesses and governments that are taking innovative advantage of this "flat world" are the ones who are forging ahead.

For those of you worried that this book is simply about trumpeting the glories of globalization and finance, rest at east. Friedman talks about open-source software collaborations, terrorism, and the failures of the American public school system, in addition to a myriad of other impacts and aspects of globalization. This book is well-researched, well-articulated, and gives a lot of food for thought, but most importantly, it gives you a wider lens for looking at your world....less

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Lily rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

03/04/08

bookshelves: economics, non-fiction

Read in March, 2008

If you are not willing to entertain the notion that free trade could be a positive force, I don't recommend reading The World is Flat.

The first section of the book almost made me throw it off the train - hundreds of pages of "OMG the internets!!" and a lot of repetitive metaphors ("TCP-IP is the rails of the tubes of the trains of the internet!") weren't neccessary. I know the world is more connected and globalization is an unstoppable force. Some of his examples of how...more If you are not willing to entertain the notion that free trade could be a positive force, I don't recommend reading The World is Flat.

The first section of the book almost made me throw it off the train - hundreds of pages of "OMG the internets!!" and a lot of repetitive metaphors ("TCP-IP is the rails of the tubes of the trains of the internet!") weren't neccessary. I know the world is more connected and globalization is an unstoppable force. Some of his examples of how the internet is changing things are interesting however - Friedman is a famous journalist and gets tours of everyone's secret corporate headquarters.

The next part of the book scared me - my job will be outsourced! America will fall behind! We've humiliated the Arab countries and they will never forgive us! But in general this is a pretty optimistic book. In the best parts of the book, Friedman documents uplifting stories of people, companies, and countries that have made globalization work for them, and then points out everyone else that is failing to do the same. Sort of inspirational, really.

He does gloss over many, many things: the environmental costs of industrializing and raising living standards, the people who are being left out of the global economy, valuable things that are not measured too well by the monetary economy (community?). The massive problems with corporations and the stock market system, historic inequality and the people who exploit it, etc, etc ...

However, his recommendations for getting everyone onto the happy-happy-globalization train are ideas I can support: better health care, more education, and less corruption in the developing parts of the world; better health care access, more education and research, and setting a good example and supporting environmental and working standards everywhere for the developed world.

Very worth a read, just don't let his stupid internet metaphors get to you - he was born into a world without the web, after all. Skip the first section and you might find the rest interesting - it's a good place to start digging into the story of globalization, even if you think he's WRONG WRONG WRONG!...less

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d e v i s a r i rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

06/18/07

This book presents an eye-opening discussion about globalization. Amidst the thousands of publication out there about the issue, this one is sure to present another point of view.

As China and India, two of the most populated countries in the world, become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, the competitions are getting stronger. The explosion of wealth in the middle classes in these two nations, have given them a new stake in the global arena. Therefore, people n...more

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Sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0374292795)

06/30/08

bookshelves: life-changing-books

Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: Everyone!

Phenomenal book! This should be required reading for all high school students to understand the economic/social/political/technological world they are about to enter. For the rest of us, I think it's a great read that would appeal to people interested in history, political science, technology, or globalization. For me, this was right up my alley and I LOVED it! Friedman is genius in my opinion. His whole premise or point to the book is to show how because of the convergence of various facto...more Phenomenal book! This should be required reading for all high school students to understand the economic/social/political/technological world they are about to enter. For the rest of us, I think it's a great read that would appeal to people interested in history, political science, technology, or globalization. For me, this was right up my alley and I LOVED it! Friedman is genius in my opinion. His whole premise or point to the book is to show how because of the convergence of various factors in the last 100 years, the world is flattening, in terms of the playing field leveling and more and more people of all parts of the world now being able to compete successfully and thrive. He was able to explain the birth of the internet and development of computer/info systems, the dot com boom/bust which actually helped lift the rest of the world up to our playing field, and a lot of global trade issues. I most enjoyed his case studies into UPS, Wal-Mart, math and science education in American youth, outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring, and a lot about China very in depth. I LOVED how he analyzed why Mexico never reached its full trading potential and is now falling apart econmically while China is reaching its full potential and is a world giant, despite the fact that Mexico has so many more natural advantages such as proximity to the U.S. He is careful to always explore all sides of an issue, such as culture, geography, politics, economics, education, benefits/cons, and allows for all counterarguments. The book isn't that argumentative, though. It's a great book. Now, a little side note, he is considered liberal in political/economic orientation...so take that as you will, but nothing is offensive. And I didn't agree with his prescription for the health care industry in America, but I loved everything else. I am uber-passionate about international relations and increasing global understanding and compassion among us all, but still, I think anyone who read this would have a MUCH better and thorough understanding of history and why/where we are today. I recommend it to everyone!...less

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Leslie rated it: