Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

[Maggie]

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman is a dense work of nonfiction. The account is told in the first person by Friedman.

The book starts off explaining why the title was chosen. Friedman describes a work meeting that his colleague was late to. He claims this happens all the time because of Washington D.C. traffic. Everyone always apologizes for being late, but this lateness gives the author time to reflect and just be in an ever changing, moving world. Friedman goes on to thank everyone that ends up being late because of the extra time it gives him to slow down.

This is the basis for the rest of the book. The book takes the reader through the evolution of technology. Friedman describes his core argument as “‘...these simultaneous accelerations in the Market, Mother Nature, and Moore’s law together constitute the ‘age of acceleration,’ in which we now find ourselves,’” (Friedman 27). From the iPhone, to Big Data, to hardware and software, and the increasing speed of all of them, each is important in understanding why the world is changing so fast. If you’re behind in knowing what’s going on with technology, this is the book for you.
Thank You for Being Late is the most well-researched book I have ever read. The amount of research is unbelievable. The majority of the book is statistic and a compilation of research, which makes it hard to read in long spurts.

My favorite part of the book was the surprising things you can do with new technology. For example connecting to the ‘last person.’ “If you want to overcome poverty, he argued, you have to answer that question today: How will we reach the last person -- meaning the poorest person in India? Can “the financially worse-off person” in India “be empowered?” he asked. That is, be given the basic tools to acquire enough skills to overcome dire poverty? In a country where 75 percent of the people live on less than two dollars a day, what bigger question is there?” (Friedman 133). If the power of technology could reach this ‘last person’ the possibilities are endless.

I’ve never read anything that was this dense other than an anatomy textbook. I enjoyed the lessons I learned from the book, but I really had trouble sitting down to read the book and not falling asleep. I think this book would have better use for a research project source than reading for pleasure.

Overall, I think Thank You for Being Late is essential to read for catching up with technology in the world. The topics covered in this book aren’t published well enough in the news.