A review of Thomas L. Friedman’s book “The World Is Flat”

The world is still rugged

The world was thought of as round ever since Columbus discovered the new continent until the shocking claim made by Thomas Friedman in 2005. And all of a sudden, all the governors and entrepreneurs were reading this New York Times best seller. According to Thomas, we are experiencing a Globalization 3.0, which “shrink the world from a small one to a tiny one and flatten the playground at the same time”. Globalization nowadays, comparing to the previous two “versions”, is driven by a more diverse force and empower individuals from all over the flat world.

This transformation can be better explained by Bill Gates. Thirty years ago, he tells Friedman, “If you had to choose between being born a genius in Mumbai or Shanghai and an average person in Poughkeepsie, you would have chosen Poughkeepsie because your chances of living a prosperous and fulfilled life were much greater there”. ''Now,'' Gates says, ''I would rather be a genius born in China than an average guy born in Poughkeepsie.''

It is really stimulating to see a flat world at first glance: In this world small and less developed countries like China and India can wrestle with western countries like United States; Individuals are essential participants of global cooperation and competence and are able to cast more and more influence on global economy. Thomas concluded the ten major bulldozers of flattening the world: The fall of the Berlin Wall, Netscape's initial public offering, workflow software, Uploading, outsourcing,offshoring, supply chaining, insourcing, In-forming and the steroids. Most of them are products or phenomenon in Internet age. The way he organized the book is like a trademark: We travel with him, meet bunches of people, study various cases. All this make our reading experience pretty interesting.

The occupation of Thomas is a journalist, thanks to which he became a frequent world traveler. Bad news is that the nature of his job is to grab a few points which have the potential of making a headline and ignore the prevailing facts. As a technology determinist, Thomas judges the future of our planet simply from the perspective of science and technology, which is not justifiable though understandable. Arabian world would probably disagree when Thomas claim that the reason why the Arabian world is paranoid and less developed is due to the less popularity of Internet. Beside technology, there are still many barriers lying between the western world and the Arabian world: The fundamental opposition of ideology and religion, the contention on natural resources (esp. oil), the intervention of supremacy and the historical problems of colonialism, to name a few. I really want to agree with Mr. Friedman on his “technology flattening the world” theory since the world is so pure and fair from that point of view. But unfortunately, it’s not.

Thomas also mentioned two new-rich of the poor brotherhood of developing countries: China and India. I happened to live in China for twenty years. And I can barely recognize the China I know from the book. For someone who has never been to China and India, the impression they get from the book will probably be these this two countries will catch up with America in the near future. The fact is, there is a huge economic gap between the coast and the rural area of China or India. Big cities Shanghai, Beijing or New Delhi is on the same altitude of the world while there are still many places in China or India that are below sea level. How can a place being flattened if it cannot provide natural resource, labor or anything else useful for the technology world? Even if China and India do realize the dream of Mr. Friedman, it can’t be from simply adopting new technology. The harder part for populous countries is reforming the system. One example would be the rapid economic growth in China for the last 20 years. China wasn’t part of the globalization until Xiaoping Deng initiated “the policy of reform and opening” in 1980s.

Another novel point of the book is the so-called “The Dell theory of conflict prevention”. Thomas claimed that the strong economic tie between different countries would be a deterrent to war. However, most wars and conflicts in the world are caused by culture (Middle East) and natural resources (Iraq war) or simply politics (overthrown of a government). World supply chain seems to have little to do with all of these factors.

Generally speaking, the world is flattening from the technological point of view. But Thomas Friedman ignores the fact that there are still many other factors which serves as barriers between countries or different areas. The rich experience of the author will surely trigger the thinking of readers anyhow, which is more important than the right or wrong of the content. One thing we are sure is that the wave of globalization is unstoppable and involves us all. So get prepared!