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Loading... The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Centuryby Thomas L. Friedman
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  melydia | Oct 28, 2009 |  Friedman does such a good job of recapping the last 20 years, you'll believe everything he says about the next twenty. (  ) pilarflores | Sep 29, 2009 | This review pertains to the abridged audio CD version of the book. Some books have a finite shelf life, and this work, I’m afraid, has passed its. Perhaps it isn’t so much that the facts have changed, but they’ve become well acknowledged. Anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the news media for the past few years is aware of the elements of “flattening” that Friedman wrote about – outsourcing, offshoring, the Internet, and the other socio-economic factors. I found few new insights here, and the anecdotal information, while interesting, wasn’t riveting. The “dirty secrets” segments (generally about how the US is going about things all wrong) are right on, but, again, not very fresh. Just depressing. A major flaw in the audiobook version is the choice of narrator, who has an irritating, juvenile “gee whiz” inflection to his voice and makes rather half-hearted attempts at dialect when reading quotes from foreigners. Someone with much more gravitas would have been more suitable. (  ) wdwilson3 | Sep 18, 2009 | I haven't read the whole book. First, it is way too long! Second, I lost interest the minute I read that "The cold war had been a struggle between to economic systems - capitalism and communism - and with the fall of the [Berlin] wall, the was only one system left and everyone had to orient himself or herself to it one way or another." This seems like a harmless statement, but I don't see how there is simply one system left. What about socialism? Or other systems used by the other 200 or so countries in the world? He's blatantly implying that the system the US use - capitalism - is the only viable one and that everyone has no choice but to embrace it. It is arrogant and ignorant. (  )2  Livana | Aug 1, 2009 | The whole book could be condensed to 100 pages. A good 100 pages well worth the read, but as it stands now it is too much. (  ) jmundale | Jul 25, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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Business process outsourcing in India |
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What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)
Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his story after his book's release and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What's changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition--on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain--are largely unaltered. Instead, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls "uploading," the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the "New Middle" class. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. --Tom Nissley
Where Were You When the World Went Flat?
Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we've now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?")
And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he's made in "The World Is Flat 2.0," including his response to parents who said to him, "Great, Mr. Friedman, I'm glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?"
The Essential Tom Friedman 
From Beirut to Jerusalem 
The Lexus and the Olive Tree 
Longitudes and Attitudes More on Globalization and Development
China, Inc. by Ted Fishman 
Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz 
The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs 
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz 
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli 
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:57 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English (19)
* Outsourcing grunt work saves money and frees up Americans to be innovative and specialized. It also improves the standard of living in the countries receiving the new jobs.
* The internet = teh awesome.
* Collaboration benefits everyone.
* OMG they have computers in Asia!
* Americans need to buckle down in science and math education or they will be left behind.
* Change is difficult but inevitable.
* Knowledge-based work is like an ice cream sundae.
* Sometimes companies in one country have employees in other countries, or they work with companies in other countries.
* Terrorists have access to the same technologies we do.
* The world is flat. The world is flat. The world is flat.
Okay, so maybe I'm being a tad flip. This was probably far more groundbreaking when it came out in 2004 and the off-shoring/outsourcing panic really started picking up speed. Though I didn't come away with any major new insights, I did enjoy a lot of the little nuggets of information, like the Indian school for untouchables and JetBlue's housewives in Utah. And there was certainly no shortage of anecdotes.
Basically, if you're new to the globalization game and want a general overview with lots of specific examples, this is a good book for you. However, if you're already reasonably familiar with just how multinational your average multinational corporation is, you might want to look for something more in depth.
One final note: the narrator was okay, but it was a little strange how he gave everyone he quoted a subtle Indian accent. (