The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman - Book Report/Review Example

Student: Instructor: December 2005 “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century" Summary and Business Perspective Analysis of Thomas L. Friedman’s Book Colors and backdrop Friedman’s book, if it had to be summarized and analyzed with scientific rigor, would have to be shorn of the journalistic gifts and Pulitzer Prize credentials of the celebrated author. It is difficult to discount the expression of such an intrepid explorer of far-away lands, courted by icons no less than Bill Gates, and whose columns in no less than the New York Times, are read with such fervor by so many people of the democratic and capitalist world. The struggle to filter facts from the veneer of romantic eloquence never leaves a reader for any significant part of the journey from front to back cover. This is not to suggest that Friedman’s travails to describe the shape of the world that he shares with his ilk, is without value. It can be a soothing balm for an appendage of low productivity, hit with a cruel pink slip on a Friday afternoon. Starving folk in West Africa will find inspiration in the joyous news of golfing in Bangalore. Pesky Hong Kong citizens who petulantly ask for freedom can rethink their blessings as vassals of their Chinese rulers. If only someone would translate this epic for Hispanic followers of Chavez and the farm workers of California! Friedman’s identity with the book does have its benefits as well. There are passages that put people above countries. It helps us to remember that successful people from the world of business have helped Friedman arrange his thoughts, and that they celebrate the success of his writing as well. One could have easily mistaken chapters as something written by Marx, or published after the demise of the communist by his friend Engels. The book serves to look inside the minds of those who have crested the wave of global business, dominated by the US establishment and its allies. We can begin to understand the values and beliefs of Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs, who live in royal splendor amidst oceans of grinding poverty. It is entirely symbolic that Friedman should have conceived of this book in a city so full of disparity, deprivation, and despair. Every glimpse of the lives of the incredibly privileged is useful to those who would like to glean insights on how to achieve material success for themselves. The prophecies of Friedman The columnist’s attempt to mimic Nostradamus is amusing. PayPal, real-time communication with people at distant locations, Linux, wireless networks, and supply chains are thought provoking: most readers will see the validity and logic or selecting them as cornerstone developments. Outsourcing and off shoring are practices that go back centuries, but Friedman can be excused for including them in his list, since the ideas are so central to his hypothesis. However, mention of Netscape and the Berlin Wall in a list of classics will appear ludicrous to the charitable, and crass to those hardened in the ways of the commercial world. International commerce in the conventional world and its social and political impacts Journalists are not bound by statistical rigor. It suffices to find an occasional nugget, for Friedman to present anecdotes as truly and widely representative pictures of new wealth generation in the third world. Readers familiar with life in the outbacks where Friedman got his inspiration will have sympathy for the rays of reality that his eyeshades must have kept out of his consciousness. The drive back to his Bangalore hotel, chauffeured in a pirated version of a Jeep, will strike an envious chord with anyone unfortunate enough to have suffered an experience of public conveyance in this blighted city. Executives are in greater danger as they try to draw conclusions for their areas of responsibility, from Friedman’s accounts, of how globalization has benefits for the first and third worlds. The example Friedman cites of Jerry Rao’s Call Center is telling. Citibank is a prime customer of the Call Center. Jerry Rao has headed Citibank operations in India. Friedman may not be aware of this, for there are no parallels with the corporate linkages of Dick Cheney. However, what is more damaging for business, is that Friedman’s editor must have struck out essential information on how some of Jerry Rao’s Call Center employees have criminally accessed US Citibank accounts, and have transferred savings of US citizens to their own pockets! Such essential vacuums in Friedman’s accounts could easily bias knowledgeable readers. Friedman makes a good case for the reductions in time and space between nations that the World Wide Web and satellite communications provide. It does not matter that most readers might know about this from other sources, for good news is always worth repeating. It is even better when recounted with Friedman’s imaginative prose. Friedman’s exposition of business as a force to rival war as a center of influence in world affairs is more useful and thought provoking. Microsoft and Intel command more respect in the emerging world than most minions of Capitol Hill do. However, the allusion to a flat world is less clear, for the power of large corporations seems to be a repetition of the roots of British colonial power in the East India Company. Christopher Columbus also discovered America, more to find a quicker route to the silk and spices of India, than to wage war against indigenous people he mistakenly encountered. Most Fortune 500 companies, and others to strive to make this grade, must know about the influence they can wield in India and China. Many people may not wish to spread such expertise too widely. Friedman’s admiration for business executives is evident in this book, as it is in much of his written and spoken expression. The book is faithful to the author’s love affair with the poster boys of capitalism, and will serve as a useful record for future biographers of this celebrated columnist. Merit will prevail Friedman makes an important case for meritocracy. There are more lessons in this concept for lay people and for politicians, than for the corporate world, but the value of the writing and the clarity with which the view is put forward, are admirable. Marxists may gloat over the admission that socio-economic groups transcend territorial boundaries, but the chances of their coming across the book are not high. Friedman’s presentation is adequately original in any case, to bask in the limelight on its own. Protection from traditional barriers has eroded and on its way to extinction. An old boy’s club can still open doors, but the risen will no longer be denied. Women, minorities, and other oppressed groups everywhere have a better chance to succeed in our age than at any other time in history. Inheritance and birth are no longer substitutes for skills, knowledge, and experience. Freedom has taken economic overtones. People can improve their lives, with less influence of non-democratic governments and unhelpful bureaucracies. Both India and China are spectacular examples of enormous progress in short periods of time, regardless of the many downsides to their approaches at which people may point fingers. Each country has chosen a path of its own, but the combined numbers of people who have benefited and who stand to benefit, is without parallel. It is to Friedman’s vast credit that he has chronicled this human achievement in such enjoyable fashion. It is worthwhile for readers to reflect on the future implications of the new template of economic emancipation. Primary education, vocational training, and continuing upgrades of knowledge have new and pervasive importance. Cultural differences that have long served to isolate vested stakes from foreign invasion are destined to gather dust in rituals and other recesses of our minds. Such developments seem to empower us, but they also insidiously threaten privileges that most of us feast on in secrecy and away from public glare. The role that Windows continues to play in making us more productive, and the generational change in material wealth of Infosys employees, are some prominent instances in Friedman’s book that serve readers as bottomless wells of introspection. No one can afford to keep in mind that the ground swell of human empowerment has only just started, with hordes of people in India, China and all continents, waiting to drench themselves in waves of new opportunities. The movement is all embracing, and even those who have enjoyed past privileges of inherited privilege and status can join. Friedman may have kept some future political agenda in mind, by restricting his comments on the future role of institutional religion, to Islam in the Middle East. Fundamentalist Muslims and Hindus wreck havoc in Bangalore and its surrounding areas. The Catholic Church stands its ground on women, homosexuality, and family planning, even as the proportion of its followers shifts from the first to the third world. Economic emancipation will bring pressures of concrete intelligence to bear on entrenched faith. Will religious establishments give up without fighting anywhere? We can celebrate to excess: hallelujahs repeatedly to the emancipation of all people in the wake of global trends that sweep the world. Endless cheers for Friedman for his elegant exposition of the new reality! Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans, and North Koreans can look forward to make common cause with geishas in Tokyo, aborigines in Australia, people of European descent in Zimbabwe and the poor in the United States. India and China are portents of a new dawn, and though many must suffer awhile yet, the glad tidings can dry tears, salve pain, and sustain courage. Competition for domestic citizens Friedman has an important message for his fellow citizens, though his readership should not be limited to his home country by any means. Foreigners, who can do the same job as domestic groups at lower cost, will take jobs away. We may spout anger at such impudence, but its effects will not be sustainable. Politicians will jump at every opportunity to pay lip service to emotive and short-term concerns, but global competition of human resources will march on regardless. We may bluster for some time, but our children will be trod on underfoot, if we do not make meaningful and essential preparations for a unified world. Friedman’s writing in this sense is like a classic work of art-there are new hues and sounds to savor with each encounter. Software engineers in Bangalore interact as equals with wizards in Silicon Valley-indeed there is seamless interchange between the two physically distant communities. Incredibly efficient producers in China offer unprecedented value on High Streets of fashion and in Malls with storeys of consumer durables. Bob Geldof can bring distant nations to synchronized displays of protest, as can Greenpeace as well. The last vestiges of communist power from Cuba to Kolkata can join hands to evade extinction. Each new generation of a Harry Potter type of innovation takes less time than before to spread with viral speed to all corners of the globe. Global markets are mixed bags for business. Traditional segments have to be redrawn. Geography, which was a common basis of segmentation in the past, is invalid in the new world of Friedman. Clusters with high economic content may be effective targets, though they are weak in terms of precedence. E commerce has no respect for leisure time, and two-day weekends are extinct. Social infrastructure built around smokestack industries faces obsolescence and redundancy, unless jobs from new research can replace old ones shipped overseas. Friedman’s writing style conveys a compelling note of urgency. He draws lessons from actual experience, rather than set out with hypotheses born in the cloisters of Manhattan. Readers are drawn in to the vortex of his experience. We can relate his stories of services from overseas as we call a toll-free number on Christmas Eve. Who are the people that work like slaves for pittances, when did they become so accomplished, and how do we protect our net worth? Friedman’s book is worth every cent if it can shake us in to action. The very advantages that the Chinese and the Indians enjoy can be ours as well. Those who have not joined the Infosys bandwagon can enroll or compete if they recast their agendas. Perhaps a subscription to a new training course can go further than a vacation. Are there hobbies that can be monetized? We can all benefit by revisiting the industry of our predecessors. India and China A third of all people live in these two vast countries. Each is the product of an ancient civilization, with continuous inputs from evolving societies over thousands of years. Language diversity in India and religious obscurantism in the sub-continent leave many of us with sketchy ideas of the value systems of people who reside there. The Chinese have always been an enigma for other races, and decades of brutally exclusive rule have cast impenetrable curtains around the mysterious land and its galactic numbers of people. Friedman cannot answer all the questions that we may have of these countries, but he does us a service by ringing strident bells of their importance as emerging centers of influence. Friedman’s own revelation from his conversation with Nandan Nilekani may evoke cynicism amongst those who cannot accept his allegory of a flat world, but we can all follow his example by interacting with Indians and Chinese, with a view to understanding them better. Most corporations know by now of the potential of China and India both as markets and as suppliers. Friedman will probably add more value for small and medium enterprises, by inspiring them to venture in to these vast lands. Infosys, with its meteoric rise in the last two decades, is an inspiring example for readers who care to go beyond the confines of Friedman’s anecdotes. Friedman does not visit the deliberations of the World Trade Organization, though it has much to do with the relationship between India, China, and the West. The success stories from these countries, which Friedman describes, are in large measure due to market access granted by the United States and to a lesser extent, by Europe. The domestic market for farm produce in India remains a matter of contention. Intellectual property rights are entirely vulnerable in China. Major European pharmaceutical companies and hardware manufacturers from the United States have won some minor concessions to conduct business in India and China, but large sectors of industry and the economy from the West are barred from doing business freely, especially in India. Real estate developers, educational institutions, mainstream media, and a host of services continue to be denied their shares of the globalization pie. Friedman is entirely silent on this, but it is not late for the wronged in the United States to use the book as a springboard to call their representatives to account. Bill Gates has been in India during the second week of December 2005. He has been asked, on prime time television, to take position on the armed action of the United States and its allies in Iraq. However, Friedman has never reported on the views of his Indian friends on their country'’ nuclear bomb. Friedman offers no prescription for human rights in Tibet, Taiwan, or Tiananmen Square. Have Washington and Brussels been taken for a ride? A change of regime in Beijing could produce a crippling discontinuity. Agrarian vote banks in India may negate the concessions that their urban and educated kin enjoy, by denying access to protected markets for their produce, by their failure to meet international food safety standards, and by contriving to perpetuate the manifold subsidies, they enjoy. It is unfortunate but essential to summarize Friedman’s book by expounding on its critical omissions. Individual empowerment Friedman makes a provocative connection between the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the 19th century Industrial Revolution and the Digital Age. Royalty first in Italy and later from Spain sponsored Christopher Columbus. He spent his last days in disgrace because he stood accused of using state resources to line his own pockets. He used unnecessary force to quell defensive behavior he encountered from people who legitimately lived on lands he discovered in error. Friedman is on solid ground as he presents the sailing expeditions in the light of truthful exploitation. This applies in large measure to his description to the Industrial Revolution, though he is in error in skipping the brutal elimination of Aleutian Indians by European settlers in what became the United States. There is no link to slavery in the United States, and to the acute and lasting effects on the African continent. Memory lapses continue to inflict Friedman as he skips Hiroshima, the subjugation of Japan and Germany, in his journey to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Abject ignorance of modern history is essential to accept Friedman’s tenuous links to the individual emancipation of the Internet. We can forgive Friedman for avoiding the pit of comparing the open source Linux to the Windows trap of his friend, but his exposition of the empowering nature of digital media is grand by nature and effective in terms of result. The power of people to shape their own futures and the glory of private influence is exhilarating. Friedman puts words in our mouth, as we rejoice in the collective achievement. Friedman would have done well to search for individuals who conduct e commerce with help from google, rather than to focus so closely on Infosys and Microsoft. Readers who have limited experience of the World Wide Web may put down their copies of the book thinking that Internet business needs corporate resources and large campuses such as the one of Infosys that has so enamored Friedman. The real elegance of the Internet is the capability is renders to individuals, who can produce value from within themselves. Nevertheless, the book can strike many sparks for people who long for opportunities for significant material and intellectual achievement. Friedman is right in distinguishing the Internet from the invasion of the Americas, and from the birth of modern industry. It is even more creditable that Friedman does not limit the book to mere exposition of individual empowerment, but shows a universal path for people to achieve such benefits and status. The message of education and training for the new generation to compete is so important, that readers in a hurry can skip the rest of the book, only to imprint this central concept in their minds. Bill Gates has made a case for changes in the US education system, albeit not in Friedman’s book, but the message is the same: other countries can gainfully emulate the Indian primary education system that prepares people for a rule ruled by technology and expertise. Friedman, perhaps with counsel from Bill Gates and his other friends, has been able to discern trends in US education and their impacts on future generations with invaluable clarity. Societies that have dominated the world for the past three hundred years face a challenge related to providing for continued technological edge during the rest of the 21st century and beyond. Friedman draws important conclusions for people with the power to change relevant policies in the United States. It would have helped if Friedman had also advised communities losing jobs to places such as India and China, to try to uncover efficiencies that would allow them to compete on price. Take Infosys itself, which is the subject of such admiration by Friedman: the company, and its peers, is the most successful on the Indian stock markets. They have improved their business performance even as the United States has endured downturns in its own fortunes. Infosys has not done this for altruistic reasons: it has made unprecedented profits in the services they have provided to the US economy. The inescapable conclusion must be that the United States endures major waste on many fronts. It is significant, though overlooked by Friedman, that Infosys does not have major revenues from Indian clients. How do Indian firms manage without Infosys? Not everyone wants to be a computer nerd. Jerry Rao’s brigands do no programming-they only answer calls for service. Perhaps Friedman should have teamed up with friends from Wall Street, or with future associates from Washington, to do the math of outsourcing. Fundamentalism and monarchies as dying embers We should be grateful that bearded men in robes have not issued an edict for Friedman’s head. It may be that the columnist’s linguistic prowess has evaded their comprehension. It is difficult to decide whether Friedman’s predictions of the failure of Islam, terrorism, violence, conservatism and non-democratic institutions in the Middle East have bases in facts to which the author is privy, or whether it is merely wishful thinking. 2005 has seen a transition in the Saudi royal family, but security and democracy seem very far away. Not many share the US administration’s proclaimed confidence of eventual victory in Iraq, and even Afghan and Pakistani governments supported by Washington, lack the effective endorsement of their peoples. Many commentators dismiss elections in Egypt as a mockery, while Syria and Iran remain defiant and intransigent. It is easier to accept Friedman’s proclamations of the global market, than it is to find comfort in his projections about the end of evil, as we know it. There are no obvious lessons for the world of business in these opinions, for we cannot rely upon them coming true. US energy independence Friedman is on much better ground as he advocates energy security for the United States. This may be interpreted as a contradiction of globalization, but the absence of stable and meaningful democracies amongst the OPEC community, demands caution in the larger interests of US citizens. Fortunately, US relationships with key Middle East monarchies have comforting records of accomplishment. However prospects of a pan-Islamic alliance, with tacit support for subversion, if not the naked aggression of nuclear capability, loom large over the dreams that beneficiaries of globalization and outsourcing share. Even those who do not share Friedman’s confidence about the demise of fundamentalism in the Middle East will thank him for raising an issue that we have been generally hesitant to confront. Heating in winter and the freedom of driving are so central to the way of life we treasure, yet western vulnerability because of these comforts has not been appreciated in adequate measure. Though energy security may be outside the domain of Friedman’s friends, and though he makes no mention of the unthinkable sacrifices that we may be called upon to make, the book will be rated highly in history, for touching upon the subject. Energy security is a vision that has the capacity to sustain US leadership, if we as a nation can come to grips with this painful thorn in our collective side. Advertorial for western democratic capitalism There is merit in Friedman’s book, and there could some dreaming as well. It does a service for the cause of the American way of life, and for capitalism as well, but is limited in its perspective. Many deprived communities, both in emerging nations and in the United States itself, have been excluded. The people, who Friedman has befriended and on who he depends, are so exceptional that one should draw no conclusions based on them. Friedman has played golf in Bangalore, but his readers who have not visited the city and the surrounding countryside must know that the vast majority of people, who live here, do so in sub-human conditions and in abject misery. Friedman has ignored the environmental degradation and social abuses that pervade in much of the countries that he has shown in unreal light. We can see extreme deprivation in American ghettos, but they are not representative of the mighty and prosperous United States. This applies to India and China, though in tragic reverse. People who have encountered the reality of countries in transition may see a glimpse of Marie Antoinette in Friedman’s honest but horribly simplistic of the travails of life in countries such as India. It is a moot point whether we will see a flood of Nandan Nilekanis and Jerry Raos in India, or whether indeed the US education system can throw up the likes of Bill Gates at reasonable intervals. Many of Fiedman’s expressed and covert assumptions about the orderly transition towards capitalism, secularism and democracy, may go horribly wrong. Do we not need a plan on which we can fall back, should the future find Friedman in error? There are other glaring omissions in Friedman’s work. Each has the power to make nonsense of his dreams. The resolution of a widely held view that the US has abused its military power is a pre-condition for security. Executives in companies know that suppliers of goods and services are notorious for fickle flattery. Has Nandan Nilekani merely voiced what he thinks his prime customers would like to hear? Can resentment over Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharieb, white phosphorus clouds in Iraq and even the comic trial of Saddam with anonymous witnesses, be eliminated altogether without the power to raise its head ever again? Could it be that Friedman is completely out of tune with important and widespread emotions in societies on whom he depends to carry the standard of the global free market? Democracy in China is another glaring omission. Cheap manufacture for US markets benefits the military and a few common citizens. The majority remain outside the circle of privilege. Hong Kong is concrete evidence that people hanker for freedom, even if pelted with economic goodies. How will China be governed? How long can a coterie lord over a people with such a sea of inherited wisdom and culture? What is the American public revolts and calls for liberty in Tibet? What if Chinese producers turn in to predators after the US completes its transition from manufacturing to an economy of intangible services? How well do we know Chinese society? Are we sure that this enormous nation will grow steadily in a straight line, and without abrupt revolution? One can ask so many questions to which firm answers do not exist. Yet this fickleness is the sand on which Friedman builds castles. The India story is better known, for no one can doubt the validity of its essential democratic processes. English is so widely known that we can communicate and understand views much better. The socialist left is a strong movement in India. Militants rule large tracts of tribal land in Central India. Marxists and other assorted communists have not only ruled the State of West Bengal for over three decades, but have done so by repeated popular vote! Anti-American sentiment is strong, though politely understated in typically Oriental subtlety. More than 90% of the population has no direct benefits from Infosys and the Call Centers. Almost half the people are engaged in agriculture with archaic productivity. The country has consistently resisted trade structures that would affect the agrarian majority. Does the United States accept this part of the globalization equation? A reader may suspect that there are many skeletons and much dirt that Friedman has hidden from our view. It may be inadvertent, but are his conclusions valid or utopian? Friedman’s description of the glories of globalization is incomplete since he has not defined its boundaries. Should we not know why the United States has stalled Japanese investments to control US steel? Does Friedman know of protectionism on his home turf, and what is his stand on the matter? We need a definition of conditions in which protectionism is valid, so that we can draw stable boundaries between national and global interests. Critics and cynics will ask such questions, so Friedman would have done well to anticipate resistance. Websites often sport links to FAQs: Friedman has no print media equivalent in his argumentation. This begins to affect you as you read the book more than once, or try to reflect deeply on its central ideas. The euphoria or laudatory reviews and the author’s towering personality take hard knocks as one begins to list questions, doubts, and counters. Ignition Friedman’s work is invaluable for all its shortcomings. How can this be so? The answer lies in the effect of the book. You may be a votary of globalization, or you may be against it. You may be a citizen of the United States, or you may belong to Bangalore. The book will shake your mind. There will be parts with which you agree in earnest; there will be others that conflict with your own experience and instincts. You will feel an urge to review your position in the level playing field of the global world. You will surely feel the urge to prepare your children for the coming age, even if you lack energy to pick up some threads of your own career. The call to action as you approach the end of the book will occur regardless of your position. Individuals and small business will benefit most from the book. Large corporations run by professionals will either yawn or use the contents to defend actions that they have already taken. Works Cited Friedman, T. L. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005. Read More