Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” Book

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“The World is Flat” is powerfully designed by the 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman. “The World is Flat 3.0” is essentially an update on globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, and its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty. At the same time, it also shows the drawbacks of globalization-environmental, economic, and social.

The World is Flat” is the most recent effort by Thomas Friedman. The book was first released in 2005, but in the very next year, 2006, the book was released again as an “updated and expanded edition.” In the year 2007, there were yet new additions made to this book and were released as “further updated and expanded: Release 3.0.”. In this book, Thomas L. Friedman describes one of his sudden realizations while he was traveling to Bangalore, India. During this journey, Friedman realized that globalization has altered the basic concepts of the economy. He used the word “flat” to denote that globalization has leveled the struggle involving the industrial and the emerging countries’ markets.

He recounts how the companies based in India and China have become an integral part of the global economy by supplying labor to companies like Dell, Microsoft, and AQL. This ranges from call center executives to accountants and from typists to software programmers. By contributing labors to the global companies, the Indian and Chinese companies have come to occupy a significant position in the complex chain of supply. What is especially remarkable about this book is Friedman’s use of organizational devices to communicate the key concepts. At times, he numbered the concepts that he felt is responsible for making the global economy flat.

He finds out ten such reasons that are responsible for resolving the fight between industrial and emerging markets and called them, “ten flatteners” (Friedman, 2007, Chap. II). In addition to these ten flatters, he marked out three additional pieces of machinery that acted in removing the wrinkles from the global economy and called them “triple convergence” (Friedman, 2007, Chap. III).

The ten reasons that Friedman labeled as “ten flatteners” bears testimony to such facts as the fall of the wall of Berlin, the emergence of Netscape, and the dot-com boom that led to the investment of trillions of dollars in fiber optic cable. It also includes such detailed information as the appearance of the common software platform, a rise of outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring, and supply chaining. It also refers to the open-source code enabling global collaboration.

The epicenter of Friedman’s discussion is to show how the unintentional surge of technology and social shifts have affected the global economy resulting in its leveling and transforming Beijing, Bangalore, and Bethesda into neighbors next door.

According to Friedman, all these flatters congregate around the year 2000 and are responsible for creating a world, which is global, flat, and web-enabled for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work. He shows how slowly this huge planet shrunk into one small web-enabled world where time, geography, distance, and slowly language are losing their significance.

Presently, this huge newly formed platform has materialized three huge economies-those of India, China, and the former Soviet Union. This materialization has dragged in three billion people those who were out of the arena for quite some time.

Friedman describes the dot-com bust, the attacks of 9/11, and the Enron scandal as “political perfect storm” (Friedman, 2007, Chap V), that completely distracted the US. Just when the nation was in need to face the fact of globalization to vie in a new world, they found themselves busy somewhere else. This is how Friedman described America’s standpoint in the whole matter of globalization.

Thus, Thomas L. Friedman accounted for one of the greatest changes taking place in our time. As the lightning-rapid proceeds in technology and communications, it creates a common platform, which was never made before for interaction of the people all over the globe. It is this platform that has led to an explosion of wealth in India and China and challenges the rest of the world to run even faster just to stay in place.

“The World is Flat” has been primarily criticized by economists for the “flat” image that lies at the center of the novel. Economists have described it as “inaccurate” (Matt Taibbi, 2005 New York Press, Volume 18) and “empty image” (Matt Taibbi, 2005, New York Press, Volume 18). They are of the opinion that Friedman contradicts his own argument. While he points out that the world is becoming increasingly inter-connected, his image suggests the opposite- a flat world, as a flat world is harder to navigate than a spherical one. Some critics are also of the opinion that through his flat earth theory, Friedman wants to perpetuate through the myth of Christopher Columbus.

Peak Oil advocate James Howard Kunstler stated that the globalization model that Friedman supported in “The World is Flat” is a “false doctrine” (Globalization is an anomaly and its time is running out”, The Guardian, 2005, Retrieved on 2005-08-04). According to Kunstler, the model that Friedman projects in his book is not only unsustainable but also undesirable. He feels that it is Friedman’s reliance on cheap oil that implies development in its use in a century but will be sealed soon due to its reduction and global warming.

Michael Sandel, a Harvard Professor, disagrees with Friedman. According to him, the horizontal collaboration that Friedman talked about in the book can be described as “just a nice name for the ability to hire cheap labor in India” (“Confusing Columbus”, The Economist, 2005, Retrieved on 2006-07-20. ). He cites an example in the book that describes India with its vast manpower and technical knowledge as a place only capable of taking the tedious and huge job of supplying labor from Y2K.

The example in the book describes India with its vast manpower and technical know-how as only being able to take on the tedious Y2K bug fix task. The author feels that this gave India a heave in the IT business that Friedman calls the “second Independence Day”. This is where most of the critics contradict as this can easily be seen as a sign of dependence; the dependence of relying on the jobs that Americans no longer want. We are not even sure about the consequences of this kind of outsourcing as we can not predict the long-term geopolitical effect of having emerging powers contingent on scraps thrown away from the American economic table.

Like his earlier book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, this book also deals with the global economy, its recent changes, and the impact that it is supposed to create because of these changes. In the book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which was published in 1999 Friedman, describes the world as undergoing two struggles, one for prosperity and the other for development. Taken in that sense, “The World is Flat” can be considered as a sequel of the former book in so far as it describes the global economy and its changes after the technological boom of the year 2000 and its consequence on eastern countries like Bangalore and Beijing and as well as America’s standpoint.

For students, especially those who are planning to pursue a career in finance, business, business management, economics, or software, this book is a must-read. Although the global economic view that Freidman presents in this book is not absolutely free from error and hence comes under the critical scrutiny of the critics and economists, it helps in forming an idea about the present world economy and its nature.

After your graduation, if you are heading towards the job market, do not forget to carry this book. No matter in what profession you are in or opting for, this book, along with “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” can be your gospel. It presents you some of the contemporary scenarios of global economic crisis, the ways to overcome it, and also gives a hint of the forthcoming crisis.

In short, “The World is Flat” along with “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” should be included in the list of a must-read for everybody, irrespective of geopolitical differences or similarities. The two books together help you in forming an idea of the economic condition all across the globe for almost the last decade.

One of the theories of evolution defines survival as “survival of the fittest”. So to fit to survive in today’s world, you have to have the knowledge of its economy, which dictates the world. The book is a clear call to action for governments, businesses, and individuals who must stay ahead in order to survive the competition.

Without any rhetoric, Friedman in this book paints the picture of a world that is moving so fast that it is difficult for anybody to keep track. The book is a historical and geographical journey of the author and he left no stone unturned in his quest for answering the question that most can not define.

Bibliography

Gonzalez, Roberto J. (2005) Falling flat: Review by, San Francisco Chronicle.
Taibbi, Matt. (2005), Flathead – The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman, New York Press, Volume 18 No. 16.
Leamer, Ed, UCLA, (2006) A Flat World, A Level Playing Field, a Small World After All, or None of the Above?
Economist, The. (2005) Confusing Columbus.
Guardian, The. (2005). Globalization is an anomaly and its time is running out.
Metacritic, (2006). The World Is Flat. Web.

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Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” Book

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