Book Title: The World is Flat
Author: Thomas Friedman
Format: Book on CD
With my second consecutive foray into non-traditional consumption of a book, I “read”, or rather listened to the book The World is Flat
Friedman does a great job with this book and I recommend it to any forward thinking businessman, entrepreneur, or even any white or blue collar worker out there. The book steps into many different realms of the flattening of the world, which I did not predict going into it. Beyond technology, it discusses education, politics, business, social issues, and even terrorism in regards to the ability of people to reach out and touch one another so easily these days.
Friedman’s choice of defining moments in the worlds history are quite accurate, choosing the fall of the Berlin wall, the IPO of Netscape, and 9/11 to show the expansion of the world. I did not think the trends he defined were anything brilliant (ie. Offshoring, Outsourcing, Open-sourcing…), but they did provide for entertaining chapters and allowed him to mix in different industries with each. The ground he covered was large, so not every point he made was new, but combining it all made it a sturdy read.
The book is not perfect. I was often frustrated by Friedman’s left-leaning, almost socialist answers to some of the problems he proposes. However, I have to agree with most of his analysis and thought process leading up to the solutions. I also found his attempt to create new words and catch phrases to be quite silly. Only the title of the book, implying the flattening of the world, seems to have made it into common conversation, but the rest has no chance of catching on. Using a keyword or phrase through one chapter is not going to burn it into people minds enough to keep it rolling.
In that regard, though, the title has made its way into the English language. People refer to the flattening of the world without having read the book and there is a reason for that. The readers of the book do agree with his views here and perpetuate this phrase when they tell others about the book. Surprisingly, while writing this review the last two days, I was presented with two examples of references to this book. First, Ben Grossman, the author of Sustainable Ink, wrote an article reviewing a Friedman New York Times article and was responded to by Friedmans publisher. To his luck and your benefit, the publisher, Macmillan, is giving away free copies of the Audiobook version of The World is Flat as a promotion for his Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — And How It Can Renew America. Yes, this is the same Audio book that I just finished listening to and you can download it free until August 11th. Thanks for the offer Ben!
The second reference to the books title came from a basketball article I read on True Hoopas I was surfing for material for a Basketball.org article. True Hoop points to the thought process behind Team USA and asks if the players really realize who they are playing against or if they are just working on their game to get better. The point he is making, which is also the point of the book, is that we, as Americans, must be aware of what is going on in the rest of the world and prepare our game plan accordingly if we are going to survive and win.
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I was amused by your statement, “I was often frustrated by Friedman’s left-leaning, almost socialist answers to some of the problems he proposes.” Friedman is anything but left leaning. All his “friends”, whom he has in plenty, are all coporate bosses, whether they be in US or India. And he loves name dropping ofcourse.
In order to get a counterperspective on Friedman’s theroy on globalization, we need to hear/read what Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel winner for economics and was Chief Economist at World Bank) said while on a trip to India – that 600 million people from India (out of the one billion!) have been left out of the “development” fold of globalization.
Similarly newspaper reports have pointed out how Chinese workers are working in apalling conditions, to churn out the low cost products, with poor pay, cramped rooms, no accident or health insurance benefits, no job security, no overtime, long working hours – so who is actually benefiting from this sort of globalization? Corporates ofcourse, and the few privileged people of India nd China who have been able to get educated in engineering and technology! Not the vast majority of population.
There is a small, but interesting book, by Aronica and Ramdoo, “The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller.” It is a small book compared to the 600 page tome by Friedman, and aimed at the common man and students alike.
As popular as the book may be, some reviewers assert that by what it leaves out, Friedman’s book is dangerous. The authors point to the fact that there isn’t a single table or data footnote in Friedman’s entire book.
“Globalization is the greatest reorganization of the world since the Industrial Revolution,” says Aronica.
You may want to see http://www.mkpress.com/flat
and watch http://www.mkpress.com/flatoverview.html
for an interesting counterperspective on Friedman’s “The World is Flat”.
Also a really interesting 6 min wake-up call: Shift Happens! http://www.mkpress.com/ShiftExtreme.html
There is also a companion book listed: Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
http://www.mkpress.com/extreme
http://www.mkpress.com/Extreme11minWMV.html
Thank you for the points. Very interesting response. In regards to the Chinese and Indians with horrible living and working conditions, I think the point is that this is nothing new. I remember in the 80′s when people were protesting wearing Nike shoes because of their sweat shops in China. The point is not that 600 million of the Indians still live miserably, but of the maybe 100 million who have been educated in the past 15 years. That is an amazing rate of growth and is still more than 1/3rd the size of the US.
In regards to his left-leaning ways, I am referring to his government solutions to many of the problems he poses. I am not denying that he is a capitalist (socialist may have been the wrong term), but I do think he relies on government programs to fix the problems rather than corporations. Going through almost every chapter where he proposes a solution, each solution is a government program or project to align the US and China is some way or something of that sort. To me, I do not think the government is the solution to globalization, but only in the way.