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The World Is Flat

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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Original 1st edition cover
AuthorThomas L. Friedman
LanguageEnglish
SubjectGlobalization
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
April 5, 2005
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback) and audio-CD
Pages488
ISBNISBN 0-374-29288-4 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is a best-selling book by Thomas L. Friedman analyzing the progress of globalization with an emphasis on the early 21st century. It was first released in 2005 and was later released as an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006.

Overview

Friedman believes the world is flat in the sense that the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries are leveling. Friedman recounts many examples in which companies in India and China are becoming part of large global complex supply chains that extend across oceans through a process called outsourcing, providing everything from service representatives and X-ray interpretation to component manufacturing. He recalls seeing such major American companies as Dell, AOL, and Microsoft using Indian teleoperators by the hundreds of thousands being paid much cheaper than if done in the U.S. He also describes how these changes are made possible through intersecting technologies, particularly the Internet, fiber-optics, and the PC.


Friedman's next chapters are about the ten forces that recently "flattened" the world (figuratively of course). He goes into almost repetitive detail about each force and begins with the destruction of the Berlin Wall. 11/9/89 or the day the Berlin Wall came down symbolized progession towards free enterprise(western economy) in economically oppressed countries. This watershed event ended the age of everyone being “equally poor” under communism and represented western philosophy as open to everyone. His second force is the creation of the [[[World Wide Web]] (WWW) and 8/9/95, the day Netscape went public. This symbolized the infinite world of the internet and world wide web to the public to access data from anywhere for cheap. "This development," Friedman says, "in turn, wired the whole world together, and, without anyone realy planning it, made Bangalone a suburb of Boston" (p.57). He says the WWW is usually mistaken as the internet but he compares the internet to a bunch of computers and wires while the web is the more user-friendly point of access for the average person. The creation of this system and the fact it has remained practically free was a modern marvel and has allowed anyone to access data around the world seamlessly.

Quote from the book:

“So, while we were dancing on the Wall, savoring our Apples, opening up our Windows, and proclaiming that there was no ideological alternative to free-market capitalism, bin Laden was turning his gunsights on America.” - Thomas L. Friedman

In this witty yet scary quote Friedman make references to some major global events and innovations that built the “flat world” platform. His references are to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rise of Apple computers and Windows operating systems. The author is implying that while Western civilization was going through a new global technological revolution, bin Laden and other extremist Muslims were creating plans for 9/11. The fact that our ideology was prospering only fueled the fire for bin Laden’s cause. While we felt we were the reason for the fall of the Berlin Wall he believed it was because of the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan and probably felt they weren’t given enough credit (even though America helped fund the Muslims in the first place). His alternative to free-market capitalism was political Islam. Friedman devotes a whole chapter to this towards the end of the book.

Thomas next goes into the rise of work flow software(Flattener #3) and how its quiet but important rise rivaled that of the publicizing of the internet. With the integration of software more people were able to “design, display, manage, and collaborate” business data handled previously by hand. Simply, small businesses were able to interact and operate more smoothly and efficiently, giving them the ability to compete with big business. According to the author, “we have reached a point in work flow software that machines are talking to other machines over the internet using standardized protocols, with no humans involved at all.” Friedman believes that these first three forces have become a “crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration.” The next six flatteners are spawned from these revolutionary forces.

Flattener #4 is the Power of Communities (Open-Sourcing) to upload information and data. Friedman points out that because communities of “geeks” have the ability to collaborate, design new software, and then upload it to the world community-developed software has risen. From blogging to Wikipedia every man is now able to not only consume but produce. Because people like to upload Friedman writes that it has the potential to be the "most disruptive force of all". This can be good or bad depending on what side of the fence someone is on. Big Business or average entrepreneur... "Opensource software is shared, constantly improvd by its users, and made available for free to anyone. In return, every user who somes up with an improvement-a patch that makes this software sing or dance better-is encouraged to make that patch available to every other user for free." Friedman (p. 83)

Flattener #5 is outsourcing, as mentioned in the introduction. This is shipping work to other places on the globe (India) in mass quantities for less money. The author believes this is the way of the future for advanced business. On page 28, Friedman seems to imply that outsourcing, though flattening, is beneficial to both countries. Though each is losing a bit of its own culture, it is gaining a bit of another culture. Furthermore, in the case of India, Friedman notes that American money is benefitting Indians, while money is also flowing back into American industry. Money flows in this way: America -> India -> America

Flattener #6, offshoring, encourages the use of Chinese labor over the Chinese market. This flattener is so influential because it set the bar for outsourced labor. Now, "China [becomes]the center of everything" (Inquierer, Nov. 5, 2001 ed., p.119). China's prosperity as an outsourcer led to the offshoring effect, that is, to the attractiveness of other cheap labor areas such as Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico, and Vietnam. In this way, "China is a threat, China is a customer, and China is an opportunity" (Kenichi Ohmae, p.117).

Supply-chaining, such as "The Walmart Symphony" (p. 128), stands as Flattener #7. Friedman compares this method of supply to a river or a stream in the way that it seamlessly flows without friction. The company uses technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and shipping.

Insourcing, Flattener #8, is not the same as home-sourcing (the use of American labor like that of Jet Blue). Friedman uses UPS as a prime example for insourcing, as it speeds up shipments by training its employees in different specialized areas. UPS, for example, does not send damaged Toshiba computers to the Toshiba headquarters, but rather saves time and money by fixing those computers at the UPS hub with UPS employees. Insourcing re-organizes and integrates companies, boosting productivity and relieving cost.

Undeniably, one of the most commonly used flatteners is Google and other search engines. Friedman attributes this unlimited knowledge to Flattener #9, In-forming. "Never before in the history of the planet have so many people-on their own-had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people" (Friedman, p.152). "It is a total equalizer," states Sergey Brin (p.152). "There is no discrimination in accessing knowledge," adds Eric Schmidt (p.153).

Finally, Friedman acknowledges "The Steroids" (digital, mobile, personal, and virtual) as Flattener #10. Skype, Ipod, cell phones, and video conferencing has made all of the previous flatteners more efficient.

In Chapter 11, "The Unflat World," Friedman discusses his philosophy of history: "I am a technological determinist! . . . I believe that capabilities create intentions. . . . But . .  I am not a historical determinist". He notes that there are three billion people who still live in an "unflat world" unaffected by the technologies and socioeconomic changes, sometimes caused by poverty. He addresses what these three billion people--as well as their governments and the world's businesses--need to do in order to join the "flat world."\\

The biggest flattener is the feeling of "humiliation and deprivation" than feeling of alienation or distance from power. Same altitude but different attitude " are the quotable quotes.

Quotes from the book: -"It's easy to predict [the future] for someone living in India. In ten years we are going to be doing a lot of stuff that is being done in America today." -Jaithirth "Jerry" Rao (p.13)

-"We are entering a phase where we are going to see the digitization, virtualization, and automation of almost everything." Friedman (p. 45)

-"The flattening process is happening at warp speed and directly or indirectly touching a lot more people on the planet at once." Friedman (p.46)

-"The faster and broader this transition to a new era, the more likely is the potential for disruption, as opposed to an orderly transfer of power from the old winners to the new winners." Friedman (p.46)

-"Now we are going to see the real human mosaic emerge-from all over the world-to drive the next generation of innovation." Friedman (p.70)

-"In short, India is a country with virtually no natural resources that got very good at doing one thing- mining the brains of its own people by educating a relatively large slice of its elites in the sciences, engineering, and medicine." Friedman (p.103)

-"There is nobody to rule anymore. It's about how you can create a great opportunity for yourself and hold on to that or keep creating new opportunities where you can thrive." Rajesh Rao (p.191)

Trivia

The book was first published with a jacket that bore a painting, called "I Told You So," depicting a sailing vessel falling off the edge of the world. The week the book came out it was learned that the publisher had not obtained the artist's permission to use the painting. Farrar, Straus and Giroux printed a new cover using an image of the earth literally flattened like a coin from the Corbis stock photography library. Because the book had already risen to the top of the nonfiction New York Times Best Seller list, the new cover also included text "National Bestseller", something common for paperbacks but highly unusual for first edition hardbound covers.

Editions

  • 1st edition, Farrar, Straus, Reese, and Giroux, 2005, ISBN 0-374-29288-4
  • Audio book, Audio Renaissance, 2005, ISBN 1-59397-668-2
  • "Updated and expanded", Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006, ISBN 0-374-29279-5

References

Reviews

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