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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Hardcover – April 5, 2005

by Thomas L. Friedman (Author)

4.2 646 ratings

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When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004," what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this "flattening" of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?

In this brilliant new book, the award-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demystifies the brave new world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt. The World Is Flat is the timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim, in his new book, 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 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 tells his eye-opening story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns will know well, and also with 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. His book is an excellent place to begin. --Tom Nissley

Where Were You When the World Went Flat?

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'd happily have peppered him with questions about The World Is Flat for hours. Read our interview 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?")

The Essential Tom Friedman

From Beirut to Jerusalem

The Lexus and the Olive Tree

Longitudes and Attitudes

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Before 9/11, New York Times columnist Friedman was best known as the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, one of the major popular accounts of globalization and its discontents. Having devoted most of the last four years of his column to the latter as embodied by the Middle East, Friedman picks up where he left off, saving al-Qaeda et al. for the close. For Friedman, cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have finally obliterated all impediments to international competition, and the dawning "flat world" is a jungle pitting "lions" and "gazelles," where "economic stability is not going to be a feature" and "the weak will fall farther behind." Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs, by contrast, will be empowered. The service sector (telemarketing, accounting, computer programming, engineering and scientific research, etc.), will be further outsourced to the English-spoken abroad; manufacturing, meanwhile, will continue to be off-shored to China. As anyone who reads his column knows, Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives who are his main sources that these developments are desirable and unstoppable, and that American workers should be preparing to "create value through leadership" and "sell personality." This is all familiar stuff by now, but the last 100 pages on the economic and political roots of global Islamism are filled with the kind of close reporting and intimate yet accessible analysis that have been hard to come by. Add in Friedman's winning first-person interjections and masterful use of strategic wonksterisms, and this book should end up on the front seats of quite a few Lexuses and SUVs of all stripes. (Apr. 5)

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–This brilliantly paced, articulate, and accessible explanation of today's world is an ideal title for tech-savvy teens. Friedman's thesis is that connectedness by computer is leveling the playing field, giving individuals the ability to collaborate and compete in real time on a global scale. While the author is optimistic about the future, seeing progress in every field from architecture to zoology, he is aware that terrorists are also using computers to attack the very trends that make progress plausible and reasonable. This is a smart and essential read for those who will be expected to live and work in this new global environment.–Alan Gropman, National Defense University, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Friedman, nominally a liberal, has historically taken the middle path and supported laissez-faire capitalism, globalization, and the power of institutions like the International Monetary Fund. Ever optimistic about globalization, he pleases its proponents and disappoints its detractors in The World Is Flat. Theres no doubt that Friedman asks timely questions, even if he sometimes shirks definitive answers. Although he acknowledges terrorisms global weight, he identifies an even more potent force shaping global economics and politics: the "triple convergenceof new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes for horizontal collaboration," particularly in China and India. Friedmans story comes alive as we meet the movers and shakers of Globalization 3.0, eavesdrop on Friedmans interviews, and witness collaborations in progress. Friedmans personal journey, if slightly padded, makes for entertaining and accessible reading. Yet critics, even those who support globalization, differed on Friedmans thesis; India, for example, has not yet become the global superpower he describes; many scholars still describe the "flat world" as a nicer name for "cheap labor." Friedman also less effectively analyzes the effects of Globalization 3.0 than its players, and embraces technological determinism at the expense of thoroughly considering major political factors (like terrorist networks, which hes previously compared to World War III). No matter your stance on the benefits or pitfalls of globalization, The World Is Flat is an important, thought-provoking bookeven if Friedmans answer to unresolved issues is, "Sort that out."

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Although it may be catchy, the title of New York Times columnist Friedman's latest book needs explaining. "Flat" here means "level," as in the level playing field on which virtually any nation can now compete, thanks to the explosion of global telecommunications, including the Internet as well as the transfer of information from First World to Third--and back. There's also a leveling of hierarchies within organizations, thanks to the increasing democratization of information from sources such as the Web. Friedman cites 10 forces that have caused this "flattening," including the fall of the Berlin Wall ("We could not think globally about the world when the Berlin Wall was there," said one economist), the emergence of Netscape as an Internet platform, workflow software, open sourcing, outsourcing, the streamlining of the supply chain (witness Wal-Mart), the organization of information on the Internet (Google, Yahoo), and the ubiquity of powerful personal telecommunications devices. Friedman is very thorough at projecting the consequences of these changes, noting the benefits we all share from this hyper-globalization, while realistically addressing, for example, the challenges American workers will face in the coming decades from talented, highly motivated workforces in such countries as India and China. A little more humor might have offset the author's trademark earnestness; still, as he has with other global issues, Friedman brings coherence and a workable plan of action to the fundamental changes our world is experiencing. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Praise for Longitudes and Attitudes:

"Eminently worth reading . . . It is Friedman's ability to see a few big truths steadily and whole that makes him the most important columnist in America today." --Walter Russell Mead, The New York Times

From the Inside Flap

"The World Is Flat continues the franchise Friedman has made for himself as a great explicator of and cheerleader for globalization, building upon his 1999 The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Like its predecessor, this book showcases Friedman's gift for lucid dissections of abstruse economic phenomena, his teacher's head, his preacher's heart, his genius for trend-spotting . . . [This book] also shares some of the earlier volume's excitement (mirroring Rajesh Rao's) and hesitations about whether we're still living in an era dominated by old-fashioned states or in a postmodern, globalized era where states matter far less and the principal engine of change is a leveled playing field for international trade." Warren Bass, The Washington Post

About the Author

Thomas L. Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work at The New York Times. He is the author of three best-selling books: From Beiruit to Jerusalem (FSG, 1989), winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction and still considered to be the definitive work on the Middle East, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (FSG, 1999), and Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 (FSG, 2002). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas L. Friedman. To be published in April, 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.

ONE

While I Was Sleeping

Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the above-mentioned countries of India, to see the said princes, people, and territories, and to learn their disposition and the proper method of converting them to our holy faith; and furthermore directed that I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that anyone has gone.
--Entry from the journal of Christopher Columbus on his voyage of 1492

No one ever gave me directions like this on a golf course before: "Aim at either Microsoft or IBM." I was standing on the first tee at the KGA Golf Club in downtown Bangalore, in southern India, when my playing partner pointed at two shiny glass-and-steel buildings off in the distance, just behind the first green. The Goldman Sachs building wasn't done yet; otherwise he could have pointed that out as well and made it a threesome. HP and Texas Instruments had their offices on the back nine, along the tenth hole. That wasn't all. The tee markers were from Epson, the printer company, and one of our caddies was wearing a hat from 3M. Outside, some of the traffic signs were also sponsored by Texas Instruments, and the Pizza Hut billboard on the way over showed a steaming pizza, under the headline "Gigabites of Taste!"

No, this definitely wasn't Kansas. It didn't even seem like India. Was this the New World, the Old World, or the Next World?

I had come to Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, on my own Columbus-like journey of exploration. Columbus sailed with the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María in an effort to discover a shorter, more direct route to India by heading west, across the Atlantic, on what he presumed to be an open sea route to the East Indies--rather than going south and east around Africa, as Portuguese explorers of his day were trying to do. India and the magical Spice Islands of the East were famed at the time for their gold, pearls, gems, and silk--a source of untold riches. Finding this shortcut by sea to India, at a time when the Muslim powers of the day had blocked the overland routes from Europe, was a way for both Columbus and the Spanish monarchy to become wealthy and powerful. When Columbus set sail, he apparently assumed the Earth was round, which was why he was convinced that he could get to India by going west. He miscalculated the distance, though. He thought the Earth was a smaller sphere than it is. He also did not anticipate running into a landmass before he reached the East Indies. Nevertheless, he called the aboriginal peoples he encountered in the new world "Indians." Returning home, though, Columbus was able to tell his patrons, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, that although he never did find India, he could confirm that the world was indeed round.

I set out for India by going due east, via Frankfurt. I had Lufthansa business class. I knew exactly which direction I was going thanks to the GPS map displayed on the screen that popped out of the armrest of my airline seat. I landed safely and on schedule. I too encountered people called Indians. I too was searching for the source of India's riches. Columbus was searching for hardware--precious metals, silk, and spices--the source of wealth in his day. I was searching for software, brainpower, complex algorithms, knowledge workers, call centers, transmission protocols, breakthroughs in optical engineering--the sources of wealth in our day. Columbus was happy to make the Indians her met his slaves, a pool of free manual labor.

I just wanted to understand why the Indians I met were taking our work, why they had become such an important pool for the outsourcing of service and information technology work from America and other industrialized countries. Columbus had more than one hundred men on his three ships; I had a small crew from the Discovery Times channel that fit comfortably into two banged-up vans, with Indian drivers who drove barefoot. When I set sail, so to speak, I too assumed that the world was round, but what I encountered in the real India profoundly shook my faith in that notion. Columbus accidentally ran into America but thought he had discovered part of India. I actually found India and thought many of the people I met there were Americans. Some had actually taken American names, and others were doing great imitations of American accents at call centers and American business techniques at software labs.

Columbus reported to his king and queen that the world was round, and he went down in history as the man who first made this discovery. I returned home and shared my discovery only with my wife, and only in a whisper.

"Honey," I confided, "I think the world is flat."

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0374292884
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition (April 5, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 488 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780374292881
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374292881
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.53 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.24 x 1.56 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #681,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #482 in Globalization & Politics
- #570 in International Economics (Books)
- #29,295 in Social Sciences (Books)

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Thomas L. Friedman

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Thomas L. Friedman has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work with The New York Times, where he serves as the foreign affairs columnist. Read by everyone from small-business owners to President Obama, Hot, Flat, and Crowded was an international bestseller in hardcover. Friedman is also the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999), Longitudes and Attitudes (2002), and The World is Flat (2005). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and easy to read. They appreciate the author's insights and thorough discussion of current events. The book provides a clear explanation of how technology has impacted business practices in layman's terms. Readers praise the author as great and enthusiastic, describing it as entertaining and fun. They consider it a valuable resource that more than meets its price.

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Readability Insight Clarity Author Entertainment value Value for money Business practice Flatness

56 customers mention "Readability"48 positive8 negative

Customers find the book engaging and useful for business students. They say it's worth reading and enjoy listening to it on CD. Readers are excited by the premise and learning more about globalization.

"...This makes for fascinating reading, but it is perhaps a bit dubious as a guide to policy and action...." Read more

"This is a very good book - 4-1/2 stars...." Read more

"First of all, I liked the book...." Read more

"...To answer these questions you need to read the book. It's worth the effort...." Read more

52 customers mention "Insight"52 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful and interesting. They say it provides a thorough discussion of current events and issues, with a master's take on the world. The author does an admirable job describing major cultural, economic, political, and management aspects.

"...I found the book so interesting. He takes a large mass of information and puts it into manageable chunks and layman's terms...." Read more

"...- the sharing of knowledge and work - in real time, without regard to geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language...." Read more

"...He addresses these issues. However, his main point is that globalization IS coming, IS flattening things, IS changing the way businesses operate..." Read more

"...Friedman assesses each issue and provides a thorough discussion of the implications. For example:..." Read more

45 customers mention "Clarity"37 positive8 negative

Customers find the book's explanation of how technology has impacted business in a simple way. They say it provides an excellent overview of how technology is transforming. The thesis is stated in layman's terms, and the book is well-written.

"...a large mass of information and puts it into manageable chunks and layman's terms...." Read more

"...creation of a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration - the sharing of knowledge and work - in real time,..." Read more

"...We face a real challenge. This books lays it out clearly. Are we going to accept it, or just watch TV and play video games?..." Read more

"...agree with all Friedman's conclusions, but you will get a fair presentation of the issues, and a wealth of knowledge about today's globally flat..." Read more

7 customers mention "Author"7 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the author's writing style and enthusiasm. They find the book well-written with personal stories and quotes from various authors, economists, and corporate executives.

"...To his credit, the author is full of enthusiasm, relating a host of personal stories...." Read more

"...Friedman is a great author who can take incredibly difficult and complicated topics and explain them with a story-teller's flair...." Read more

"...great pluses of the book are the details in numbers and qoutings from various authors, economist and corporate execs on recent changes in the..." Read more

"One of the great thinkers and writers of our era." Read more

6 customers mention "Entertainment value"6 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's entertainment value. They say it's well-written, entertaining, and fun.

"Thomas Friedman is at his enjoyable, engaging, and irritating best in this new book...." Read more

"...The book is well-written, entertaining, and covers its topic from a number of different angles...." Read more

"This book has got to be the most entertaining, well-written, and fun book to read on the dry subject of globalization...." Read more

"...Friedman's style is very attractive and perhaps the most entertaining among writers...." Read more

5 customers mention "Value for money"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book provides good value for money. They appreciate the big picture it paints and the insightful analysis of Walmart's supply chain. The book offers a new perspective on outsourcing and how we all play in the same game.

"...these observations, among many others, that Friedman's book more than earns its price...." Read more

"...Supply Chaining. This is an excellent piece on Wal-Mart with its vast integrated supply chain and how it brings consumers the best goods at the..." Read more

"...The advantage of globalization is cheaper and more plentiful products and services for American consumers...." Read more

"...After all, outsourcing nearly always saves Americans money, and creates more innovative, value-added jobs...." Read more

4 customers mention "Business practice"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book helpful for business people, educators, and non-IT corporate world denizons. They mention it covers telecommunications and business practices that have changed forever.

"...convergence of computing, web-based telecommunications, and business practices that have changed forever the nature of international collaboration..." Read more

"...Best for corporate world denizons who do not work in a large corporate IT department. Three thoughts before you purchase; 1...." Read more

"...in numbers and qoutings from various authors, economist and corporate execs on recent changes in the corporate world and across nations...." Read more

"A must-read for parents, educators and business people..." Read more

8 customers mention "Flatness"5 positive3 negative

Customers have different views on the book's flatness. Some say the world is indeed flat, while others say it's not flat.

"...All in all, The World is Flat, despite its flaws as a work of social science or history, offers a number of interesting ideas for further..." Read more

"This book is pointless to purchase in 2017. This book is flat. I just like having it around on the table to mess with flat earth people." Read more

"...The first part of this book describes ten forces that are flattening the world or, if you prefer, leveling the playing field...." Read more

"OK, the world IS flat, I got it already!..." Read more

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R. McOuat
Book heavily influenced Bush's 2006 State of the Union Address
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2006
Verified Purchase
Bush's 2006 State of the Union Address (01-31-06) was hyped as his chance to make a legacy for himself prior to becoming a lame duck president. With the pressure on, Bush (or somebody who wrote his speech for him) must have read "The World is Flat," the number one best selling book at the time. In the book, Thomas Friedman says (p. 283): "If President Bush is looking for a similar legacy project, there is one crying out - a national science initiative that would be our generation's moon shot: a crash program for alternative energy and conservation that would make America energy-independent in ten years."

Bush got the point, although he was less ambitious in his stance: "Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years. Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

Also, Freidman criticizes the Bush Administrations decision to cut the National Science Foundation funding in 2005. The predominant emphasis of the second half of the book is Friedman's bemoaning the tendency of America's society to provide a lack of incentive for our brightest students to become engineers. They all want to be MBAs, lawyers and MDs. Also, he says that in today's k-12 education system, teachers are not prepared to make science interesting: "you have teachers turning off kids because they were not trained. You know the old saw about the football coach teaching science - people who do not have the ability to make this accessible and gripping for kids."

Apparently, Bush (or his writer) read that part of the book also. In his 2006 State of the Union Address, Bush made the following proposals:

1. Train 70,000 high-school teachers over five years to lead advanced-placement classes in math and science.

2. Encourage up to 30,000 math and science professionals over eight years to become adjunct high school teachers.

3. Provide $50 billion to double over 10 years the investment in federal agencies that support basic research in the physical sciences and engineering.

4. Support making the research-and-development tax credit permanent to give companies certainty in tax planning.

Friedman also critisizes Bush's response to 9/11: "When we got hit with 911, it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to summon the nation to sacrifice, to address some of its pressing fiscal, energy, science and education shortfalls - all the things that we had let slide. But our president did not summon us to sacrifice. He summoned us to go shopping." Ouch.

Friedman is engineer crazy. He wants everyone to be an engineer. Quoting Bill Gates, Friedman writes "The Chinese have risk taking down, hard work down, education, and when you meet with Chinese politicians, they are all scientists and engineers. You can have a numeric discussion with them - you are never discussing `give me a one-liner to embarrass [my political rivals] with' you are meeting with an intelligent bureaucracy."

Unfortunately, we live in an increasingly litigious society. Also, trade and medical afflictions will always be issues, so what's wrong with an MBA or MD? Sounds to me like those degrees meet Friedman's own definition of an "untouchable" job (one that can't be outsourced or off-shored). Those degrees lead to jobs that are nonfungible (not easily digitized), anchored and adaptable.

Friedman provides pungent criticisms of America's preparedness to compete in a flat world. He criticizes American work ethic and calls America a "leisure-time society." More succinctly, and brutally, he states that "In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears - and that's our problem."

One area that I don't necessarily agree with Friedman is on his "coefficient of flatness:" "the notion that the flatter one's country is - that is, the fewer natural resources it has - the better off it will be in a flat world." Then, he references Hong King, Japan, South Korea and coastal China as examples. Weren't all of these areas empires at one time? Didn't Western Europe use to send explores to these areas to find resources (i.e. spices, silk, etc.). More likely, the ebb and flow of power is following a cyclical pattern that is related to an extraneous factor besides "lack of resources."

I found the book so interesting. He takes a large mass of information and puts it into manageable chunks and layman's terms. I had heard of much of the trends he discussed (outsourcing, off shoring, open sourcing, web flow soft ware), but he takes the time to explain and define them, not indulging in an assumption of prior knowledge. Friedman does write in an alarmist manner, especially when discussing the future. He is definitely concerned about America's work ethic, education system, and lack of engineering base. In quoting Vivek Paul, Friedman is cautiously optimistic about the effect of fear will have on America's effort to become prepared for a flat world: "Sure there is fear, and that fear is good because it stimulates a willingness to change and explore and find things to do better."

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Jeffrey Hart
Good Book But Take with a Grain of Salt
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2005
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I am a big fan of Tom Friedman's books, but he is a journalist, not a social scientist. His method is simple: interview a lot of people around the world and then tell stories about them in order to build up an image of what is new and interesting. He likes to bring in anecdotes about himself, his family, and his friends. He also draws a lot of material from interviews with business leaders like Bill Gates and Craig Mundie of Microsoft, Craig Barrett of Intel, Vivek Paul of InfoSys, Sergey Brin of Google, and David Neeleman of JetBlue; former government officials like Thomas Pickering; and politicians like former president Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico. Occasionally he brings in the ideas of economists and political scientists. There is a breathlessness to the narrative as Friedman rushes around the globe from person to person, place to place, to obtain the latest gem of wisdom about the modern world.

Unlike most social scientists, Friedman does not limit himself to ideas that have been subjected to intense scrutiny by a community of theorists and empiricists. The elite interviews have a random quality, and are not selected systematically as they would have to have been in a work of social science. Friedman occasionally cites statistics that support his views, and rarely cites statistics that do not. Unlike an historian, Friedman makes only cursory attempts to put the ideas of his informants into a larger context. We are usually not told why a particular informant is making a particular argument, so it is up to the reader to guess when and where an informant is defending a vested interest. This makes for fascinating reading, but it is perhaps a bit dubious as a guide to policy and action.

The main idea put forward in this book is that the world is "flat." We do not get a definition of flatness until pp. 176-7, where Friedman says:

The net result of this convergence was the creation of a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration - the sharing of knowledge and work - in real time, without regard to geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language. No, not everyone has access yet to this platform, this playing field, but it is open today to more people in more places on more days in more ways than anything like it ever before in the history of the world. This is what I mean when I say the world has been flattened.

Flatness, in short, is quite a lot like globalization. Later on, Friedman admits that he knows that the world is not flat." Instead, he says, "the world has been shrinking and flattening for some time now, and that the process has quickened dramatically in recent years." (p. 375) What is missing is a clear distinction between a process and an end-state and a set of criteria by which to judge how far the process has gone toward that end-state.

The second chapter of the book enumerates ten "flatteners" that according to Friedman have resulted in "flatness." They are:

* The end of the Cold War (which makes almost everyone a potential participant in the world economy);

* The beginning of the "viral marketing" of software pioneered by Netscape after it became a private company;

* The invention of work flow software and supporting systems;

* The rise of the open source software movement;

* The outsourcing of work by multinational corporations (MNCs) to low-wage workers in India and China;

* The offshoring of certain important operations by MNCs;

* The rise of complex, international supply chains for many products and services;

* The penetration of many large firms by other firms provide serve and logistical support (UPS being a major example) which Friedman calls "insourcing;"

* "In-forming" - the rise of the search engines like Google and web portals like Yahoo; and

* "The steroids" - inventions like cell phones and wireless technology that enhance the flattening potential of the other flatteners.

In Chapter 3, Friedman argues that these flatteners made possible a triple convergence of computing, web-based telecommunications, and business practices that have changed forever the nature of international collaboration and competition: "The Berlin Wall came down, the Berlin mall opened up, and suddenly some 3 billion people who had been behind walls walked into the flattened global piazza." (p. 182) In Chapter 4, Friedman poses a number of puzzles that need to be sorted out as a result of the flattening process. He uses as an example the recent controversy in the state of Indiana about the outsourcing of the upgrading of state computer systems for the processing of welfare claims to an Indian company. The organizing questions for this chapter are "who owns what?" and "who's exploiting whom?"

The remaining chapters focus on the policy implications of flatness. Chapters 5-8 focus on the United States, Chapter 9 deals with the developing countries, Chapter 10 deals with business enterprises, and Chapters 11-12 deal with connections with military/strategic and security concerns, including the rise of terrorist networks like al-Qaeda.

The chapters on implications for the United States are quite well written and potentially of value to policy makers. Friedman puts a major stress on the need for public policies to help the American work force become more flexible and capable of adding greater value. In Chapter 7, he marshals statistics about the growing gap in the production of engineers and scientists between the United States and its competitors to argue for a renewed commitment to post-secondary science and engineering education:

...we should be embarking on an all-hands-on-deck, no-holds-barred, no-budget-too-large crash program for science and engineering education immediately. The fact that we are not doing so is our quiet crisis." (p. 275)

He stresses in Chapter 8 the need for better leadership, more focused social activism, and better parenting as part of an overall solution to the crisis. He calls for a new politics of "compassionate flatism" (p. 297) which characterizes neither of the two major political parties:

...we should be thinking about how collaboration between consumers and companies can provide an enormous amount of protection against the worst features of the flattening of the world, without opting for classic protectionism. (p. 302)

In Chapter 9, Friedman tries to explain why countries like China and India in the developing world are taking advantage of flatness, while countries in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa are falling further behind. He endorses the views of the World Bank that openness toward the world is a key to success and that preserving cultural insularity comes at great cost. He recommends that all developing countries embrace what he calls "reform retail" by which he means enabling "the greatest number of your people to have the best legal and institutional framework within which to innovate, start companies, and become attractive partners for those who want to collaborate with them from elsewhere in the world." (p. 317) This is not just good advice for the developing countries, in Friedman's view. As a result, some critics call Friedman a "neo-liberal."

One of Friedman's overriding concerns toward the end of the book is whether a flatter world will be a more peaceful world. In Chapter 12, he revisits the "McDonald's" theory of conflict from his 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, in which he posited that the probability of military conflict between two countries is lower if both countries host McDonald's restaurants. This theory is replaced here with the "Dell" theory of conflict, in which the probability of conflict is lower when two countries both participate in the same "supply chain." Thus, if China provides components for Taiwanese computers, the leaders of the two countries will be reluctant to start a war with one another. This would a hopeful feature of the new world, since global supply chains keep getting longer and the probability that any given two countries will be part of the same chain is generally increasing.

Friedman's analysis of al-Qaeda is one of the better aspects of this book. He argues that Al Qaeda is able to recruit suicide bombers from those who share its "islamo-leninist" world view (pp. 394-397), a radical political ideology that thrives on memories of a constructed Islamic past rather than dreams of a promising future. People in the Islamic world who admire Osama bin Laden share his feeling of "humiliation" over the dominance of the West and the lack of economic progress in Islamic countries:

If we have superior faith, and if our faith is all encompassing of religion, politics. and economics, why are others living so much better?

This is the source of the real cognitive dissonance for many Arab-Muslim youth - the sort of dissonance, and loss of self-esteem, that sparks rage and leads some of them to join violent groups and lash out at the world. It is also a sort of dissonance that leans many other, average folks, to give radical groups like al-Qaeda passive support. (p. 397)

The problem with shutting al-Qaeda down entirely is that that would mean shutting down the very infrastructure than has made flattening possible -- the global financial, communications, and transportation infrastructure that Walmart and al-Qaeda both depend upon. That is too large a price to pay, so instead Friedman recommends that people in Islamic countries be given hope for the future to replace their resentment about the past. The best way to do this, in his opinion, is to make it possible for innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive in a more democratic environment. His best argument for this is the lack of support for al-Qaeda in the second largest Islamic community in the world, i.e. in India.

All in all, The World is Flat, despite its flaws as a work of social science or history, offers a number of interesting ideas for further speculation and research. It goes beyond Friedman's earlier work on globalization by focusing on the technological and institutional underpinnings and by admitting that there are both winners and losers in the flattening process. It builds on Friedman's strengths as an analyst of politics in the Middle East and provides a new way of thinking about the war against terrorism. Finally, it offers some interesting ideas for policy reforms in both the industrialized and developing worlds. Not all of these ideas are new, but they are presented in a forceful and coherent manner.

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CJC
Good book, still relevant in 2019
Reviewed in Canada on December 13, 2019
Verified Purchase
I purchased it used. Purchased at the recommendation of a colleague. The book is a few years old, but not out of date. Good background that's still relevant today. Would recommend you to read it if you haven't before. It's a thick one though.

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Akwaaba Kitchen
N/A
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 20, 2020
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SAURABH TIWARI
True, today world is really flat.
Reviewed in India on October 17, 2017
Verified Purchase
It gave me an immense knowledge on what was happening around when I was a toddler.
Worth a read, to get basics of how these IT guys made billions out of this permeating business and made the world flat.

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Philipp
schule
Reviewed in Germany on March 2, 2013
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brauchte es für die schule. viel sagen kann ich dazu nicht es liest sich sehr angenehm.
Und da der Preis gut war war ich damit zufrieden

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tetsuya morikawa
フラット化する世界を多面的に活き活きと描写
Reviewed in Japan on October 9, 2005
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地球を小さく平らにしている(フラット化)大きなうねりを政治（ベルリンの壁崩壊に伴う東西世界分裂の終焉）、テクノロジー、ソフトウェア、アウトソーシング、インソーシング、物流網等の点から多面的に活き活きと描写している。例えば"The Only Sustainable Edge" (John Hagel、他著)で指摘されているoutsourcing/off-shoringは単なる低賃金の利用自体が優位性の源泉ではなく生産性や仕事のクオリティを追及した結果としての企業の行動現象であるといった面も、本書で明確に描かれている。
また、フラット化した世界での競争力の源泉は必然的に教育や異なるもの・新しいものに対する受容的な姿勢といったものであること。その一方で、こうした世界のフラット化と相克する、過激な（＝新しい時代への適応不全を起こしている）宗教思想と、世界の進化を「侮辱・屈辱(humiliation)」という捉える一部の人々の精神構造や、フラット化の阻害要因となる膨大な数の世界の貧困層底上げに向けての市場原理とプライベート・セクターを積極的に活用して成功している例の描写は非常に興味深い。
「ゆとり教育」という名の下に、世界の流れに逆行して競争力低下を招く愚作を展開した日本の過去20年余り(?)の教育改革（改悪）や、英語教育のレベルの圧倒的な低さに伴う世界とcollaborateする能力や受容性の欠如を考えると、フラット化した世界での日本の将来は余り明るいものではないと思わざるを得ないが、一方で、こういう世界に職業人個人としてどうやって対処していくか、また自分の子供をどうやって教育してあげられるのか、と考える多くの材料を提供してくれる。
文句なしに今年になってこれまでに読んだ中で最高の本です。

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