Customer Reviews:
 Globalization 3.0 May 17, 2005
Stacey M Jones (Conway, Ark.)
17 out of 23 found this review helpful
THE WORLD IS FLAT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by Thomas L. Friedman is a continuation in many ways of the main ideas Friedman wrote about in his well known and popular book THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE. FLAT even has a continuation, or extension, of his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention (The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention). But this book can stand on its own as Friedman asserts that we've moved from Globalization 1.0 (Countries globalizing with the Industrial Revolution) to Globalization 2.0, which was the subject of LEXUS, to Globalization 3.0, individuals globalizing. The further enmeshment of global resources and influences in world trade is the subject of FLAT.
Friedman got the idea for the title of his book after speaking to a businessman in Bangalore, India, a city that has profited mightily from the outsourcing that companies the world over have been able to do since the dot-com boom and bust, in which thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable were laid then sold for pennies on the dollar when companies went belly up. The businessman said that the playing field was leveling due to the reduction of trade barriers held up by nations to protect their own workers. For example, did you know that last year alone, 400,000 U.S. tax returns were prepared by accountants in India? Now ambitious Indian educated citizens don't have to leave India to work hard in information and professional jobs. They can stay home and get good work opportunities. This level playing field is the flattening of the world as Friedman sees it.
But Friedman isn't a free-trade-and-let-the-others-be damned kind of guy. He acknowledges the damages that globalization can do, and advocates necessary friction or barriers at some points along the way to flatness. However, he does say that American professionals (young and old, entry-level and experienced) should become "versatilists" because just when you think your job can't be outsourced to India or China, it will be. He goes into some detail about how to make yourself special, specialized or adaptable to protect yourself or to keep ahead of the negative effects of flattening.
Friedman also worries about the state of education in our country today. He is worried that while our higher education system is one of the best in the world, our K-12 schools are not keeping up with the demands of a flat world. {He backs this up with an assertion by Bill Gates that America's high schools are "obsolete.") He asserts that countries like China and India are not racing America to the bottom of the wage pool (fighting for low-paying manufacturing jobs), but they are racing us to the top. To protect our position we must continue to evolve and grow, and we must start, particularly, with comprehensive science and math education opportunities for girls and boys, as young as possible.
The book progressed in a very readable form, with the first section "How the World Became Flat," which included four chapters, "While I Was Sleeping," "The Ten Forces That Flattened the World," "The Triple Convergence" and "The Great Sorting Out," in which he outlines the factors that have or are flattening the world, and how their coming together has brought us to where we are today. The second section, "America and the Flat World" has four chapters on our place in the changing world of technology, trade, culture and growth. Four shorter sections finish the book, "Developing Countries and the Flat World," "Companies and the Flat World," "Geopolitics and the Flat World" and "Conclusion: Imagination." As each chapter ended I would think, "What else can he say about this? It seems like he's covered it all..." And then I would continue reading and be fascinated by the new application, and the different ramifications of Globalization 3.0.
I think the book was at its best when he applied his knowledge, understanding and unique framing of globalization to a subject about which he is also greately knowledgeable, Islam and its relationship to terrorism (if you haven't read his FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM, you should!). Friedman writes cogently of how Al-Qaeda reacts to globalization in an effort to stanch its influence and reach within Islamic societies yet simultaneously uses globalization's societal changes to its advantage for communications, research, fund-raising and money transfer.
[He also writes very interestingly of how India, the world's second largest Muslim nation with 150 million Muslims and the world's largest democracy had no 9/11 terrorists and no known Al-Qaeda members. He makes another connection between oil-rich oppressive regimes and terrorism.]
One of the most moving subjects of the book comes toward the end, when Friedman writes of an Indian businessman who returned from working abroad to start a school for children of India's lowest caste, the untouchables. The story underscores his position on education, development and hope undermining terrorism's pull in the developing world. The boarding school takes children from squalid conditions and educates them for a professional life. Friedman engages in a typing race with one of the young girls. He has a touching story about asking the children what they want to be and hearing things from doctor to astronaut to poetess. He writes that their dreams keep them from destructive desires:
"All dreamers in action--not martyrs in waiting" (p. 468).
Friedman writes very conversationally and clearly, using effective and engaging metaphors for what seems like a complex and complicated subject. I loved this book, I loved the process of reading it and all that I learned doing so, and I recommend it without hesitation.
No More Barriers December 14, 2005
Dr Adam Weiss (Buffalo Grove,IL.)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
The World Is Flat: Friedman takes the reader through events leading up to having no more barriers of commucations, exchanging of information and the over all effects it has on our day to day lives.
The author offers detail rather than "sound bites" of information on globalization the "good, bad and ugly" and how it effects our lives today and how it will effect our grandchildern.
You need to read this book February 25, 2007
Milarepa (CA USA)
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
If you have any interest in the future of your career or business in general, you need to read this book. Mr. Friedman provides a lucid history of the Flat World, he also gives plenty of advice that individuals, companies and nations can take to prepare for the future.
It's important for our decision makers to understand these global dynamics and I suggest suggest that you send a copy to your congressional representatives.
You Cannot OVER ESTIMATE the IMPORTANCE of Friedman's work - Read this book FOR SURE!!!!! March 18, 2007
Richard Stoyeck (Westport, CT)
10 out of 19 found this review helpful
First, before you read another word, if you are buying this book, you want the expanded and updated version, which was published on April 18, 2006. It has another 100 pages that are not in any other versions. These 100 pages by itself are worth the entire cost of the book. Also make sure you read the section on terrorism, Friedman is as good as it gets on this subject.
Now having said that, how often in a lifetime do you come across people that REALLY make you THINK? People who CHALLENGE the assumptions that underpin the entire framework upon which each of us has to understand, interpret, and ACT ON the world. This is Tom Friedman's gift to us. Even if he's not completely right, it matters only that he has the rest of us thinking about what he's saying, and for this we should be grateful.
You want to read this book if:
1) You find a compelling need to understand what telecommunications, and the new information age means to you, me, and the rest of us?
2) You find it important to know if you and I are going to be able to do the work we are doing right now for the rest of our lives?
3) You want to know if the United States is going to continue to be the world's only superpower with hegemony over different areas of the world, and technology.
4) You want to know if we are in fact at an INFLECTION POINT (Andy Grove -Intel), where the world as we know it is about to change radically in ways we can not currently envision?
Are these questions important to YOU?
I believe these are vital questions, that each of us has to explore and make decisions about, and then EXECUTE what is best for each of us. Tom Friedman does an extraordinary job in conveying to you the state of the world as it really is, not as we would like it to be, or as our politicians would like us to believe. It would seem that some readers are not happy with Friedman? They find him arrogant, too intellectual, just full of himself, and irritating.
This isn't about the messenger - it's about the MESSAGE
The message is one of hope, but we have to be listening. What has happened very simply is that a trillion dollars worth of new high-tech telecommunications cables were installed around the world in the late 1990's, with no real intended purpose, except there was the money to be spent. It then became apparent that you could talk via telephone or computer across the planet for the SAME COST as someone 200 feet away in your neighbor's home - The world was never the same again, or as the book's title indicates, THE WORLD IS FLAT.
CHEAP Bandwidth and the Internet - CHANGED EVERYTHING
Friedman gives you the whole story. You can now get an x-ray, or CAT scan in a hospital in Iowa at 3AM, and have an Indian doctor 12 time zones away interpret the results for you real time at 1/20th of the cost. Your child needs tutoring. You can have a PhD tutor your child on the telephone from India for $10 per hour, rather than $50 or a $100 per hour here. The world is changing certainly. You either get on the train and go with it, or you get taken out by that train as it sweeps by. Either way, you are not going to stand still according to Friedman.
Look at the website you are reading right now. You can read reviews and access any book, and have it delivered to your within days without leaving your front porch. You can even download many books them instantly. You can obtain the knowledge of the universe while sitting on a river in Montana, or a cattle ranch in Texas. This is fantastic, and this is indeed transforming the way we think, act, and execute.
You Can't Ignore Friedman, but you can't EXTRAPOLATE the future either!!!
Friedman talks about, how many people seem preoccupied with the notion of China and India overtaking the United States, and or the world changing to become something we don't recognize today. If there is one thing that is certain about the future, it is that you cannot take what you see right now, and extrapolate into the future. Life just doesn't work that way.
The United States is the only country in history that imports more people and makes them citizens of America, than the rest of the world COMBINED. Think about it, we are in a constant state of REJUVENATION. No other country can begin to claim this.
In addition this country produces genius level individuals greater than any other country, witness the sheer number of Nobel Prize winners, and the innovations that just don't happen anywhere else. Whether it's the invention of the Internet, the PC, vaccines, new media, or managerial ways of thinking and executing. It's all happening here, and probably will, for decades to come.
Read Tom Friedman, embrace the future, and enjoy a remarkable new world, just as Columbus, the Mayflower settlers, and our founding fathers enjoyed. Tom Friedman provides a roadmap, but only up to a point. How the rest of the story gets written is up to us. Good luck.
Richard Stoyeck
Heads in the sand should read this book! August 23, 2007
Brian T (Canada)
16 out of 25 found this review helpful
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.
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