The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century [Hardcover]

A member of the U.S. Congess donated a photograph to a local shop in Cape Town. He wrote across the bottom: "God bless America." Little did he understand what these words would mean in Cape Town: "America? Should God not bless the world?" The photograph would seem an appropriate metaphor for this book. The idea for the book was born when author Tom Friedman, a celebrated journalist, investigated outsourcing to India -- proof that "intellectual capital" may be delivered "from anywhere". As a result, he considered that "the global competitive playing field was being leveled" -- and decided to pursue the trend.

Is the world really flat (or flattening)? Is it flattening competitively, as Friedman suggests? Early on in the book, Friedman alluded to the dark side of such "flattening". He wrote: "But contemplating the flat world also filled me with dread . . ." My own first thoughts were: "Perhaps he thinks of the avarice of the West, or the deceitfulness and destruction of empire?" Yet he was thinking exclusively of "Al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks". This seemed bound to be a one-dimensional book. Did his attitude change as he developed his theme? Essentially, no. Some four hundred pages later, his main concern was "a fundamental interest in keeping the American dream alive".

Friedman considers that there have been "ten forces that flattened the world". #1. The "balance of power across the world" has tipped towards democracy. #2. "The computer and its connectivity [has become] inherently more useful for millions of people". #3. Connectivity has enabled "work flow" to be distributed worldwide. These flatteners, in turn, have empowered "new forms of collaboration", which represent Flatteners #4 to #9. Finally, Flattener #10 serves to amplify "all the other flatteners": the fast advancing digital revolution.

Friedman "always believed in free trade". Should he now? In Bangalore, he looked across "these Indian Zippies", and considered: "Oh, my God, there are so many of them." His first thought: he would not want "any American" to suffer. However, "the way to succeed is not by stopping the rail­road line from connecting you, but by upgrading your skills and making the investment[s]". So the advantage comes down to skills and investments. I wondered whether Friedman missed a page in Economics 101, titled "Terms of Trade". He might have spotted the New International Economic Order (NIEO), and how industrialised countries, led by the U.S., opposed much of the agenda, tipping the world scales in their favour.

This book would seem to represent a sobering example of the propaganda of empire -- not to speak of how the deception of empire swallows those who indwell it. Not only is this a book by a celebrated journalist. He won the approval of the Pulitzer Prize committee three times -- which would represent, presumably, the opinions of a large swathe of the U.S.A. I had suspected that such thinking might exist in the U.S.A. This book provides disturbing insight.

In "Slaugherhouse Five", Kurt Vonnegut introduced us to the Tralfamadoreans. These bizarre creatures said humans have a confined view of the world. It's as if we were sealed in a container, looking at the world down a long, narrow pipe. Thomas Friedman fits that description well in this book on how "globalisation" has developed over the past decade. Artfully portraying how large corporations are extending their reach around the globe, what he sees is intense and rewarding. What he misses is depressing and possibly calamitous. Although Friedman's sprightly style and unbounded enthusiasm is initially captiviating, a different feeling arises after you close the final page. The worst thing that can be said about this book is that everything Friedman says in it is true.

What is globalisation? Friedman sees it as technology spreading the wealth from industrialised to developing nations. Collapsing barriers, particularly "trade barriers" help promote economic development for both First and Third World countries. He proposes a ten step historical sequence of forces that promoted globalisation. These forces, in his view, enabled the spread of Western electronic technology, encouraging economic growth. From the fall of the Berlin Wall through "outsourcing" to utilise cheap labour, to wireless communication, these forces converged to give us a true "global village". It's more than widening the labour pool. Friedman cheers the idea of his taxes being done in Bangalore or CAT scans taken in Cape Cod being diagnosed in Melbourne. All that concerns Friedman is that the information be turned around overnight ready for delivery the next morning. He claims that the knowledge needed in New York is goading leaps in education to provide it in places like India and China. That "education" includes language-skill classes to enable "help-desk" staff sound more "American". The staff even adopt names like "Betty" or "Rob" to convince callers that they're "right next door" instead of ten thousand kilometres away.

While plodding through the extensive list of successful ventures around the planet, largely foster-parented by highly competitive high-tech US technology firms, you discern that he's quoting the same people repeatedly. Certain figures in India loom large, but it's hard to see how many of these new entrepreneurs are actually in the global market instead of building up their domestic economy. As you encounter these big players, it's hard not to see a top-heavy, unitarian structure emerging. Although these new firms are portrayed by Friedman as uniformly service agencies, the reader can't help but wonder if more Enrons are in the making. More collapses like that, which don't have to be triggered by fraud, will bring down many affiliated or dependent companies. Friedman argues that the international arrangement of "global supply chains" is so tightly integrated now that wars between states in that complex geopolitical structure have become impossible. But it doesn't take a war to collapse an economic bubble.

Friedman argues that his "bubble" will continue to grow, but takes but the merest peek at the societies underlying the inflationary process. We learn nothing of how widespread the technological advancements in the nations he visits are. In what he supposes is a glowing example, he makes a quick jaunt to an "untouchable" village in India, visiting a school teaching English and journalism. These people have little water, no sanitation and food is scarce. Are these the future "help desk" staff? Later, he laments the "quiet crisis" in the US where science and technology education is teetering. Nearly forty per cent of NASA's technical staff, he notes, is over 50 years old. Where will the replacements come from? India, China and Japan are already advancing in space programmes - a field where heavy rocketry and miniature electronics are necessities. And two of those nations possess nuclear weapons.

Friedman's glee at dispersing high-tech services around the globe totally ignores the many costs incurred. He thinks "outsourcing" is a "good thing" for the US economy because it will drive people to secure new talents. He likes having airline tickets electronically distributed. He extols the US business leaders promoting the "flat Earth" without noting that real wages are declining, wealth is being concentrated and skilled workers remain threatened over job security. He isn't aware of environmental issues being exacerbated by some of the factors he applauds. His rosy view of the world needs serious enlargement. Perhaps he might step along the hall at the New York Times and have a chat with his colleague Paul Krugman. He might actually learn something. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

The basic idea behind this book is: by enabling us to instantaneously communicate, the internet has allowed work to be broken into smaller bits and hence (with the rise of new types of networks this enables) the marketplace has become more efficient and competitive. Sound banal? Well, it is.

Indeed, once I got to the end of the book, I wondered why I had bothered to read through it. For anyone who follows the business press and has an interest in economics, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING new to find in this book, except perhaps in some of the details covered, such as the way UPS has transformed itself into a logistics company rather than a simple package deliverer.

Why was I so disappointed? I guess it is because of what I thought Friedman would bring to the book. On the one hand, I had hoped that Friedman might synthesize a vast range of knowledge into a framework that would tie together many disparate trends in a way that makes sense. That is, afterall, what Lester Thurow can do at his best. Unfortunately, what I found here is a half-baked metaphor - "Flatness," implying that the oldprotective barriers are "down" - that Friedman then tried to stretch to fit just about everything under the sun. (By using it as part of the everyday vocabulary of the book, it leads to some laughably tortuous prose: you get "compassionate flatism", "In the flat world you get your humiliation dished up to you fiberoptically" and the like). Alas, like Procrustes stretching his guests to fit his beds, this just doesn't capture enough to genuinely enlighten. He lacks the grounding to theorise.

Indeed, I found that he got many details wrong. First, Friedman is making a kind extension of the Ricardo argument for international economic specialization with the advent of the internet, etc., is for the better is spite of the risks. (This misreads Ricardo, who made an argument for international trade based on static rather than dynamic assets, but that is another story.) As such, this adds nothing new, though his arguments on developing educational skills are well taken (but exactly how new is that advice?).

Second, Friedman approaches a plethora of policy issues, from the unemployment of accountants (as their work is delegated to India) to dealing with Bin Laden (and how his network uses the internet). Rather than fitting it all into a context, it is a kind of shotgun approach that lurches all over the place, incoherently in my view, linked only by the fact that we can communicate faster than ever. He also covers things so superficially that it is appalling. For example, he tells us that Moslem youths feel rootless and humiliated and so turn in rage to religious fanatics. Well, duh.

On the other hand, as a reporter for a first-rate newspaper, I thought he would unearth things that others have not. Instead, what I found was that he talked almost exclusively to CEO-level people, virtually all of whom are visionaries with their heads in the clouds. They entertain some idea of what things might become, but have few thoughts on the gritty problems involved in getting there, the cracks into which great ideas frequently fall and where they fail. It appears to me that what Friedman did was to find some talking head and let him pontificate uncritically and unchallenged. This was simply an awful and superficial performance - anyone who talks to these people, as I must in my work, should challenge them or at a minimum pin them down. Friedman, perhaps happy they are accepting as an equal, does neither.

The rhetorical style of the book is also ridiculously repetitive. In each chapter, he has some glib saying, vaguely related to the chapter's theme, to repeat after an observation, like "this is not a test" or "sort that out". In truly narcissistic style, he acts as if when he puts a label on something, he encompasses it all by virtue of who he is, so he just hammers it into the readers' minds. It is not only boring, but he seems unaware as to how intellectually lax the book is - perhaps because he is so self-satisfied. I bet that, in answer to my assertion that there is nothing new here, he would say it is because he discovered it all first and made it mainstream - but I think he has just become intoxicated with his own mind.

The only person to whom I wd recommend this book is someone who doesn't read the newspapers and wants a superficial introduction to the vast and accelerating changes around us today, which would lead to further critical inquiry elsewhere. Otherwise, forget it.