The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Book Review: Okay
Summary: 3 Stars
I love the idea of the book, and at times Friedman is brilliant. But just like the title, the book is too easy, too thinly wrought.Book Review: One of the best books on the changing impact of globalization
Summary: 4 Stars
The first chapter of this book contains a fascinating little statistic: In 2003 some 25,000 US Tax returns were done in India. In 2004 this number was closer to 100,000. For 2005 it is expected to be 400,000. As a member of a company which prepares tax returns in the US this is a remarkable and thought provoking insight into the speed at which global change occurs. The book's conclusion up front is that if you are working in the US you had better focus on quality discussions and service, not the simple accounting work of the return itself.
What the title essentially means is that the world is shrinking rapidly. The book describes the incredible speed at which India and other developing nations are creating an entirely new dynamic in how work gets done, and information is shared. He talks about Globalization 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, with the most current adoption being only a few years old, yet gaining speed every day exponentially.
This is not as simple as just "outsourcing" work to other parts of the world, but includes how US companies themselves employ wholly new ways to get things done faster. UPS for example, is not only the way to ship your laptop to get it repaired, but actually does the repairs itself. In some McDonald's your order at the drive through sign is actually processed hundreds of miles away in a call center and routed back to the restaurant in the form of an order and your photo to improve accuracy of the order. All this takes place without your knowledge within seconds and 30 feet. Jet-Blue takes the opposite approach to outsourcing, as it employs its reservationists from their homes. The productivity and loyalty improvements prove the approach works, despite the fact that many companies will never give up the illusion of control and thus fail to benefit in the same way.
The book also looks at other ways in which this new global relationship requires a different kind of social responsibility. (Page 298). Many companies are already looking at how to source supplies in a manner which encourages environmental responsibility. Several companies have aligned certain standards of production, regardless of the physical location, that adhere to specific rules regarding hazardous materials, child labor, and other compliance issues. He outlines seven rules he claims will help companies compete in a global world. (Chapter 10)
One great example is how EBay has created a self governing world community through its feedback system. This type of approach allows the organization to create an organization that works globally without the usual command and control centralization.
Overall, this is a very fun book to read. It is written so well that it is hard to put it down. While the conclusions are somewhat weak, I took this as an acceptable fact given that this book is more of a series of observations as opposed to a thesis on globalization and the speed of change. I recommend it highly to anyone who wants a more in depth view of the changes happening today and coming tomorrow, whether we like it or not.
Book Review: classic friedman
Summary: 4 Stars
this book is exactly what you would expect from TF. he is a great writer with an eye for a compelling story. But his point is not that original. if you really want to dig deeper and understand globalization, I would recommend the great books on this topic by Pietra Rivoli and Martin Wolf, both of which cover really interesting intellectual territory, but have great stories tooBook Review: Bucky was far ahead...
Summary: 3 Stars
Tom Friedman spoke at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the next day I responded to the campus newspaper story with the following (4/12/05):
While I can agree with Tom Friedman's view that the global economic playing field is leveling ("The World is Flat" in his metaphor and book title), I was amazed that he had to take a year off to educate himself about this change (and then write a book about it) because "he had slept through its transformation."
Any student who attended SIU during the decade of the 1960's and paid attention to SIU's University Professor R. Buckminster Fuller's prognostications would have been well aware of such a possibility. Bucky had issued (from his "World Resources Inventory" office) a 4-page information piece which fully explicated this likelihood.
It went as follows.
Page one is blank, except for the "World One" title and caption which says that "each invisible dot represents 1% of humanity in the pre-historic era when the remotest humans would never meet each other in their lifetimes" (the dots were invisible since we don't know where to put them in that pre-historic era).
Page two shows Bucky's patented map (based upon transforming an icosahedronal globe from its spherical representation to its planer representation) in its "World Two" -- "water ocean world" -- view (peel the surface like a three-bladed propeller around Antarctica), where "each small dot represents 1% of humanity in the era when the remotest humans were 6 months sailing time from each other." (Bucky's father, in Boston, would be gone six months of the year to purchase goods from China/India for his import business).
Page three is the "World Three" view, which shows Bucky's "Air-Ocean" transformation of his patented map (peel the surface aong the 'spine' of the 90th Meridian as one continuous land island in an ocean of air), on which "each dot represents 1% of humanity in the era when the remotest humans were 48 hours by commercial airliner from each other." (He should know, since he spent the decade flying from one presentation to another around the planet, logging more miles in a year than anyone but an astronaut; this map is still available from the Buckminster Fuller Institute today, updated to show a high-resolution satellite view of "Spaceship Earth").
Page four -- "World Four" -- is again blank, except for the caption which says that "each (larger!) invisible dot represents 1% of humanity in the era when the remotest humans will be no more than 1/4 of a second apart via global telecommunications operating at the speed of light" (which is the era that Tom Friedman has belatedly discovered).
Bucky would draw a number of insights from these "World One to World Four" transitions (of which Friedman's "level playing field" is the most obvious and least consequential).
Just consider: from World One to World Two is a global "shrinkage" from a "lifetime" down to six months (a reduction of about 80 to 1, depending on the length of a pre-historic lifetime). The additional global "shrinkage" from World Two to World Three is from six months down to 48 hours (about 90 to 1). But the global "shrinkage" from 48 hours down to 1/4 of a second is on the order of 600,000 to 1 -- which is a quantitative difference of such magnitude as to be a profound qualitative difference.
Nobody alive, however erudite or accomplished, has had any experience whatsoever with a planet transformed by such a qualitative difference. No matter what your age or experience, you are equally ignorant as to how to deal with this magnitude of transformation. Which demands study that goes well beyond the meager insights generated by Pulitizer Prize winning pundit, Tom Friedman. Your best source of insight for such a task would be to review the works of (my personal hero and mentor) R. Buckminster Fuller.
Hey, I'm still trying to learn how to cope, too!
Bill Perk
WW2 Veteran; RAND Emeritus; SIU Emeritus; Advisory Board, Buckminster Fuller Institute (www.bfi.org); co-founder and Board Member, RBF Dome NFP (www.buckysdome.org); Member, CESJ (www.cesj.org); Member, EI, LLC (www.equitechllc.com); GENI supporter (www.geni.org); World Citizen
Book Review: Too much information without meaningful conclusions!
Summary: 1 Stars
Friedman stays true to his journalism background. The book contains alot of 'reporting' but no critical analysis or conclusions are made.
There are other books on globalization that make for a better read.