The World is Flat – a critique
TweetFinished reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. Thanks to Nambikumar Palani for insisting that I read this excellent book.
Overall I think this is a book that everyone interested in current affairs must read. Friedman should be complimented for not presenting a dystopian view of globalization given the amount of negative sentiments currently prevailing about globalization. He has peppered the book with numerous anecdotes, mini case studies of endeavors/companies that all of us should be aware of, such as: The Digital Divide Data in Vietnam, Aramex of Jordan, Conservation International, Abraham George’s Shanthi Bhavan School, ASIMCO in China etc.
Its also a chock full of little known facts such as – the apt description of globalization in The Communist Manifesto (!), the fascinating story of how Friedman’s laptop was put together by Dell’s global supply chain etc.
Friedman has also given some excellent pointers on how companies and individuals should cope with globalization and actually take advantage of it. More importantly, he has clearly brought out the benefits of globalization.
Now for some of the negatives:
1. Flat is a difficult metaphor to attach to the globalization phenomenon. Of course, without that metaphor, Friedman’s masterful packaging and positioning of this book would perhaps not have happened effectively. One was almost inundated with references to this book regardless of where one went – conferences, award ceremonies, company presentations, water cooler chats.
2. Friedman tries very hard to create a theory out of his observations in an otherwise excellent book on globalization. The result of this is that there are too many references to Flat – Flatteners, Flatism, Compassionate Flatism and even Coefficient of Flatness, oh! please. At some points you feel as if you are reading a new religious/political doctrine – Compassionate conservatism having been made famous by the GOP.
4. Since Friedman chooses inappropriate monikers for his theory like Triple Convergence and Ten Flatteners and keeps referring to it throughout the book, you have to keep going back to the original references to those terms to digest what he is saying – to invoke Friedman’s metaphor, you get Flatulence.
3. Noticed a few inaccuracies like – India and China have no natural resources and hence globalization is key. I was surprised to see such a basic inaccuracy. India has a lot of natural resources and probably China has even more. Its possible that Friedman equates Oil to natural resources because when he talks of the oil-rich arabic countries he talks about abundance of natural resources.
One more I noticed – where he describes how India and China can quickly change the curriculum of the students without having to jump through the hoops as in the US. I don’t know too much about China but given the speed at which the Chinese Government passes laws and enforces them could mean that they can change the curriculum quite fast as well. As for India, education is a state subject like in the US and given the democratic setup a broad consensus has to be achieved to push through changes. So education reforms move at a glacial pace like everything else.
4. I was also surprised to see that the book does not have a bibliography section, especially a book that intends to propound new theories. For instance, when he talks about the ills of globalization, he mentions that if India and China start consuming the way the first world is doing today, it will lead to serious enviromental disasters. I am sure Friedman has heard of Jared Diamond’s recent book Collapse, which talks about how self-inflicted environmental disasters have been the typical cause of crumbling civilizations.
In sum, this is a book I would strongly recommend.
References:
1. Hilarious rant of Friedman’s book in the New Yorker by Matt Taibbi.
Excerpt – Let’s speak Friedmanese for a moment and examine just a few of the notches on these antlers (Friedman, incidentally, measures the flattening of the world in notches, i.e. “The flattening process had to go another notch”; I’m not sure where the notches go in the flat plane, but there they are.)
2. Wired Magazine on Why the World is Flat
Thomas Friedman in his book The World is Flat interprets things differently from those who did the talk before they walk. Freidman takes the obvious and makes it something else. He does this quite a bit in his writings. After reading some of his writings, there is a further distance from the understanding of what the facts really are. Definitions are changed for no reason at all. There is “communications by rank” ( see http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000636.html ) where he talks in the language of the elite. Globalist Free Traders seem to have a knack for this where cause and effect are reversed and much of traditional understanding of history is blurred.
For example, Free Trade is not trade as historically defined. Free Trade is based on moving production from place to place and centered about outsourcing or insourcing jobs based cheaper and cheaper labor. Factories are now portable ready to move again and again for the sake of labor costs. Still, this is compared to the past understanding of trade where products were actually being traded. Today the main commodities being traded are human beings as workers. They are put on a world trading block to compete with each other based on the lowest common denominator down to wage slave and even child labor.
High technology has been made a generic process where workers now make less and less. It is foolish to prepare for this industry if the jobs come down to minimum wages as they have in the USA and even less overseas. The PC computer has become a throwaway. As a core of the class room, its value of about $100 to $200 does not grow that much more value in the use of it. The internet is a collage of random information. It is good for finding some information quickly but so far it is dud compared to the manual systems of the past.
During the most successful period in our history, the computer was used as just a tool and not as an end in itself. Major corporations grew rapidly when human dynamics were first and the computer was just a secondary device to speed things up. Anyone who has suffered through a long search on the web instead of having someone to call for a quick answer, know this. And of course, today there is the dreaded voice mail where there is an endless road to never never land.
For more information, visit http://tapsearch.com/flatworld Exploring the lost worlds in the Flat World of Thomas Friedman fables with Ray Tapajna, editor and artist at Tapart News and Art that Talks at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews/
See also :
http://tapsearch.com/flipflatworld Flip the Flat World of Friedman over and see what you get. It is not pretty and has more holes than swiss cheese.
See also the Real World from the perspective of the streets of USA by those who did the walk for many years prior to doing the talk. The choice is reality or sophisticated confusion led by Globalist Free Traders at Thomas Friedman