The World Is Flat

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

Original 1st edition cover
Author Thomas Friedman
Country United States
Language English
Subject Globalization
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
April 5, 2005
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) and audio-CD
Pages 488
ISBN 0-374-29288-4
OCLC 57202171
330.90511 22
LC Class HM846 .F74 2005
Preceded by Longitudes and Attitudes
Followed by Hot, Flat, and Crowded

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is an international bestselling book by Thomas L. Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st century. The title is a metaphor for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, where all competitors have an equal opportunity. As the first edition cover illustration indicates, the title also alludes to the perceptual shift required for countries, companies, and individuals to remain competitive in a global market where historical and geographical divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Friedman himself is a strong advocate of these changes, calling himself a "free-trader" and a "compassionate flatist", and he criticizes societies that resist these changes. He emphasizes the inevitability of a rapid pace of change and the extent to which emerging abilities of individuals and developing countries are creating many pressures on businesses and individuals in the United States; he has special advice for Americans and for the developing world (but says almost nothing about Europe). Friedman's is a popular work based on much personal research, travel, conversation, and reflection. In his characteristic style, he combines in The World Is Flat conceptual analysis accessible to a broad public with personal anecdotes and opinions. The book was first released in 2005, was later released as an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006, and yet again released with additional updates in 2007 as "further updated and expanded: Release 3.0." The title was derived from a statement by Nandan Nilekani, the former CEO of Infosys.[1] The World is Flat won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2005.

Summary

In his book, The World is Flat, Friedman recounts a journey to Bangalore, India, when he realized globalization has changed core economic concepts.[2] In his opinion, this flattening is a product of a convergence of personal computer with fiber-optic micro cable with the rise of work flow software. He termed this period as Globalization 3.0, differentiating this period from the previous Globalization 1.0 (in which countries and governments were the main protagonists) and the Globalization 2.0 (in which multinational companies led the way in driving global integration).

Friedman recounts many examples of companies based in India and China that, by providing labor from typists and call center operators to accountants and computer programmers, have become integral parts of complex global supply chains for companies such as Dell, AOL, and Microsoft. Friedman's capitalist peace theory called Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention is discussed in the book's penultimate chapter.

Friedman repeatedly uses lists as an organizational device to communicate key concepts, usually numbered, and often with a provocative label. Two example lists are the ten forces that flattened the world, and three points of convergence.

Ten flatteners

Friedman defines ten "flatteners" that he sees as leveling the global playing field:

Proposed remedies

Thomas Friedman believes that to fight the quiet crisis of a flattening world, the United States work force should keep updating its work skills. Making the work force more adaptable, Friedman argues, will keep it more employable. He also suggests that the government makes it easier to switch jobs by making retirement benefits and health insurance less dependent on one's employer and by providing insurance that would partly cover a possible drop in income when changing jobs. Friedman also believes there should be more inspiration for youth to be scientists, engineers, and mathematicians due to a decrease in the percentage of these professionals being American.

Dell theory of Conflict Prevention

The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, also known as simply the Dell Theory is a capitalist peace theory and is an updated version of his previous "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention".

“The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.”[3]

That is, as long as corporations have major supply chain operations in countries other than that corporation's home country, those countries will never engage in armed conflicts. This is due to the economic interdependence between nations that arises from a large corporation (such as Dell) having supply chain operations in multiple global locations and the reluctance of developing nations (in which supply chain operations commonly take place) to give up their newfound wealth.

In his previous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued that no two nations with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another: this was known as the Golden Arches theory. Later, Friedman upgraded that theory into the "Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention" by saying that people or nations don't just want to have a better standard of living as symbolized by McDonald's franchise in their downtown, but want to have the lump of the labour sector that is created by globalization. That is, developing nations do not want to risk the trust of the multi-national companies who venture into their markets and include them in the global supply chain.

Thomas Friedman also warns that the Dell Theory should not be interpreted as a guarantee that nations who are deeply involved in global supply chains will not go to war with each other. It rather means that the governments of these nations and their citizens will have very heavy economic costs to consider as they contemplate the possibility of war. These costs include the long-term loss of the country's profitable participation in the global supply chain.

This theory relates with how conflict prevention occurred between India and Pakistan in their 2001 - 2002 nuclear standoff, where India was at risk of losing its global partners. The relationship between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan was also cited as an example of this theory - they both have strong supply relations with each other and a war between the two seems very unlikely today.

Critical reception

The World is Flat received generally positive popular and critical reception, and some negative criticism.

The Washington Post called the book an "engrossing tour" and an "enthralling read". The review closed with, "We've no real idea how the 21st century's history will unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book will certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through".[4]

An opposing viewpoint was found in a 2007 Foreign Policy magazine article, where Professor Pankaj Ghemawat argued that 90% of the world's phone calls, Web traffic, and investments are local, suggesting that Friedman has grossly exaggerated the significance of the trends he describes: "Despite talk of a new, wired world where information, ideas, money, and people can move around the planet faster than ever before, just a fraction of what we consider globalization actually exists."[5][6] Indian development journalist P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor for The Hindu, says "it's not the ‘world’ that is flat, but Thomas Friedman’s ‘brain’ is flat."

Some critics have pointed out that the book is written from an American perspective. Friedman's work history has been mostly with The New York Times, and this may have influenced the way in which the book was written some would have preferred a book written in a more "inclusive voice".[7]

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has been critical of Friedman's book. In Making Globalization Work, Stiglitz writes:

Friedman is right that there have been dramatic changes in the global economy, in the global landscape; in some directions, the world is much flatter than it has ever been, with those in various parts of the world being more connected than they have ever been, but the world is not flat [] Not only is the world not flat: in many ways it has been getting less flat.

Richard Florida expresses similar views in his 2005 Atlantic article "The World is Spiky".[8]

John Gray, formerly a School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science, wrote another critical review of Friedman’s book called "The World is Round". In it, Gray confirms Friedman’s assertion that globalization is making the world more interconnected, and in some parts, richer, but disputes the notion that globalization makes the world more peaceful or free. Gray also declares, “least of all does it make it flat”.[9]

Geographers on the whole have been particularly critical of Friedman's writings, views influenced by the large body of work within their field demonstrating the uneven nature of globalization, the strong influence place still has on peoples' lives, and the dependent relationships that have been established between the have and have-not regions in the current world-system. Geographer Harm de Blij has detailed these arguments for the general public in Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America (2005) and The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape (2008).

Physicist Frank Duarte criticizes the concept of a flat world, in the context of Kodak's demise, by writing: "In 2005 the hypothesis of a flat world was used to support the vision behind the... digital transformation. The notion of a flat world is completely erroneous even in a metaphorical sense... By the summer of 2007... nearly 80 buildings in Kodak Park had already been demolished. This gave an ironic twist to the notion of a flat world."[10]

Editions

References

  1. Daniel H. Pink (May 2005). "Why the World Is Flat". WIRED. Retrieved 2014-12-10.
  2. Warren Bass (April 3, 2005). "The Great Leveling". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-09-06.
  3. The World is Flat (ISBN 1-59397-668-2), Thomas L. Friedman, pg 421
  4. "The Great Leveling". The Washington Post. 2005-04-03. Retrieved 2013-11-26.
  5. Pankaj Ghemawat (March/April 2007). "Why the World Isn't Flat" Foreignpolicy.com. (Subscription). Accessed 2008-04-03.
  6. Pankaj Ghemawat (March 2007). Why the world isn't flat. Foreign Policy. Accessed 2012-10-05.
  7. Peter Begley (2006). "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century". Accessed 2006-11-06.
  8. Richard Florida (October 2005). "The world is spiky". Atlantic Monthly. Accessed 2009-05-09.
  9. Gray, John (2005). "The World is Round". The New York Review of Books (Trans. Array, Web ed.). pp. 1–9.
  10. F. J. Duarte, Laser Physicist (Optics Journal, New York, 2012) pp. 137-138.
  11. Justin Fox (October 17, 2005). "A Painter Is Flat-Out Flimflammed". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved 2007-10-21.
  12. http://humanlaw.typepad.com/humanlaw/2006/03/the_world_is_fl.html

External links