The World Is Flat

For other uses, see The World Is Flat (disambiguation).

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-FirstCentury is an international bestselling book by ThomasL. Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in theearly 21st century. The title is a metaphor for viewing theworld as a level playing eld in terms of commerce, whereall competitors have an equal opportunity. As the rstedition cover illustration indicates, the title also alludesto the perceptual shift required for countries, companies,and individuals to remain competitive in a global marketwhere historical and geographical divisions are becomingincreasingly irrelevant.Friedman himself is a strong advocate of these changes,calling himself a free-trader and a compassionateatist, and he criticizes societies that resist thesechanges. He emphasizes the inevitability of a rapid paceof change and the extent to which emerging abilities ofindividuals and developing countries are creating manypressures on businesses and individuals in the UnitedStates; he has special advice for Americans and for thedeveloping world (but says almost nothing about Europe).Friedmans is a popular work based on much personal re-search, travel, conversation, and reection. In his charac-teristic style, he combines in The World Is Flat concep-tual analysis accessible to a broad public with personalanecdotes and opinions. The book was rst released in2005, was later released as an updated and expandededition in 2006, and yet again released with additional up-dates in 2007 as further updated and expanded: Release3.0. The title was derived from a statement by NandanNilekani, the former CEO of Infosys.[1] TheWorld is Flatwon the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman SachsBusiness Book of the Year Award in 2005.

1 SummaryIn his book, The World is Flat, Friedman recounts a jour-ney to Bangalore, India, when he realized globalizationhas changed core economic concepts.[2] In his opinion,this attening is a product of a convergence of personalcomputer with ber-optic micro cable with the rise ofwork ow software. He termed this period as Global-ization 3.0, dierentiating this period from the previousGlobalization 1.0 (in which countries and governmentswere the main protagonists) and the Globalization 2.0(in which multinational companies led the way in drivingglobal integration).

Friedman recounts many examples of companies basedin India and China that, by providing labor from typistsand call center operators to accountants and computerprogrammers, have become integral parts of complexglobal supply chains for companies such as Dell, AOL,and Microsoft. Friedmans capitalist peace theory calledDell Theory of Conict Prevention is discussed in thebooks penultimate chapter.Friedman repeatedly uses lists as an organizational deviceto communicate key concepts, usually numbered, and of-ten with a provocative label. Two example lists are theten forces that attened the world, and three points ofconvergence.

1.1 Ten atteners

Friedman denes ten atteners that he sees as levelingthe global playing eld:

#1: Collapse of the Berlin Wall 11/9/89: Fried-man called the attener, When the walls camedown, and the windows came up. The event notonly symbolized the end of the Cold War, it allowedpeople from the other side of the wall to join the eco-nomic mainstream. 11/9/89 is a discussion aboutthe Berlin Wall coming down, the fall of commu-nism, and the impact that Windows powered PCs(personal computers) had on the ability of individ-uals to create their own content and connect to oneanother. At that point, the basic platform for the rev-olution to follow was created: IBM PC, Windows,a standardized graphical interface for word process-ing, dial-up modems, a standardized tool for com-munication, and a global phone network.

#2: Netscape 8/9/95: Netscape went public atthe price of $28. Netscape and the Web broad-ened the audience for the Internet from its rootsas a communications medium used primarily byearly adopters and geeks to something that madethe Internet accessible to everyone from ve-year-olds to ninety-ve-year-olds. The digitization thattook place meant that everyday occurrences such aswords, les, lms, music, and pictures could be ac-cessed and manipulated on a computer screen by allpeople across the world.

#3: Workow software: Friedmans catch-all forthe standards and technologies that allowed work to

1

2 1 SUMMARY

ow. The ability of machines to talk to other ma-chines with no humans involved, as stated by Fried-man. Friedman believes these rst three forces havebecome a crude foundation of a whole new globalplatform for collaboration. There was an emer-gence of software protocols (SMTP simple mailtransfer protocol; HTML the language that en-abled anyone to design and publish documents thatcould be transmitted to and read on any computeranywhere) Standards on Standards. This is whatFriedman called the Genesis moment of the atworld. The net result is that people can work withother people on more stu than ever before. Thiscreated a global platform for multiple forms of col-laboration. The next six atteners sprung from thisplatform.

#4: Uploading: Communities uploading and col-laborating on online projects. Examples includeopen source software, blogs, and Wikipedia. Fried-man considers the phenomenon the most disruptiveforce of all.

#5: Outsourcing: Friedman argues that outsourc-ing has allowed companies to split service and man-ufacturing activities into components which can besubcontracted and performed in the most ecient,cost-eective way. This process became easier withthe mass distribution of ber optic cables during theintroduction of the World Wide Web.

#6: Oshoring: The internal relocation of a com-panys manufacturing or other processes to a for-eign land to take advantage of less costly operationsthere. Chinas entrance in the WTO (World TradeOrganization) allowed for greater competition in theplaying eld. Now countries such as Malaysia, Mex-ico, Brazil must compete against China and eachother to have businesses oshore to them.

#7: Supply-chaining: Friedman compares themodern retail supply chain to a river, and pointsto Wal-Mart as the best example of a company us-ing technology to streamline item sales, distribution,and shipping.

#8: Insourcing: Friedman uses UPS as a prime ex-ample for insourcing, in which the companys em-ployees perform services beyond shipping for an-other company. For example, UPS repairs Toshibacomputers on behalf of Toshiba. The work is doneat the UPS hub, by UPS employees.

#9: Informing: Google and other search enginesand Wikipedia are the prime example. Never be-fore in the history of the planet have so many people on their own had the ability to nd so much in-formation about so many things and about so manyother people, writes Friedman. The growth of

search engines is tremendous; for example, Fried-man states that Google is now processing roughlyone billion searches per day, up from 150 millionjust three years ago.

#10: The Steroids: Wireless, Voice over Inter-net, and le sharing. Personal digital devices likemobile phones, iPods, personal digital assistants, in-stant messaging, and voice over Internet Protocol(VoIP). Digital, Mobile, Personal and Virtual allanalog content and processes (from entertainmentto photography to word processing) can be digitizedand therefore shaped, manipulated and transmitted;virtual these processes can be done at high speedwith total ease; mobile can be done anywhere, any-time by anyone; and personal can be done by you.

1.2 Proposed remediesThomas Friedman believes that to ght the quiet crisis ofa attening world, the United States work force shouldkeep updating its work skills. Making the work forcemore adaptable, Friedman argues, will keep it more em-ployable. He also suggests that the government makes iteasier to switch jobs by making retirement benets andhealth insurance less dependent on ones employer andby providing insurance that would partly cover a possibledrop in income when changing jobs. Friedman also be-lieves there should be more inspiration for youth to be sci-entists, engineers, and mathematicians due to a decreasein the percentage of these professionals being American.

1.3 Dell theory of Conict PreventionThe Dell Theory of Conict Prevention, also known assimply the Dell Theory is a capitalist peace theory and isan updated version of his previous "Golden Arches The-ory of Conict Prevention".

The Dell Theory stipulates: No two coun-tries that are both part of a major global supplychain, like Dells, will ever ght a war againsteach other as long as they are both part of thesame global supply chain.[3]

That is, as long as corporations have major supply chainoperations in countries other than that corporations homecountry, those countries will never engage in armed con-icts. This is due to the economic interdependence be-tween nations that arises from a large corporation (such asDell) having supply chain operations in multiple global lo-cations and the reluctance of developing nations (in whichsupply chain operations commonly take place) to give uptheir newfound wealth.In his previous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Fried-man argued that no two nations with a McDonalds fran-chise had ever gone to war with one another: this was

3known as the Golden Arches theory. Later, Friedman up-graded that theory into the Dell Theory of Conict Pre-vention by saying that people or nations don't just want tohave a better standard of living as symbolized byMcDon-alds franchise in their downtown, but want to have thelump of the labour sector that is created by globalization.That is, developing nations do not want to risk the trustof the multi-national companies who venture into theirmarkets and include them in the global supply chain.Thomas Friedman also warns that the Dell Theory shouldnot be interpreted as a guarantee that nations who aredeeply involved in global supply chains will not go to warwith each other. It rather means that the governmentsof these nations and their citizens will have very heavyeconomic costs to consider as they contemplate the pos-sibility of war. These costs include the long-term loss ofthe countrys protable participation in the global supplychain.This theory relates with how conict prevention occurredbetween India and Pakistan in their 2001 - 2002 nuclearstando, where India was at risk of losing its global part-ners. The relationship between the Peoples Republic ofChina and Taiwan was also cited as an example of thistheory - they both have strong supply relations with eachother and a war between the two seems very unlikely to-day.

2 Critical reception

The World is Flat received generally positive popular andcritical reception, and some negative criticism.The Washington Post called the book an engrossingtour and an enthralling read. The review closed with,We've no real idea how the 21st centurys history willunfold, but this terrically stimulating book will certainlyinspire readers to start thinking it all through.[4]

An opposing viewpoint was found in a 2007 Foreign Pol-icy magazine article, where Professor Pankaj Ghemawatargued that 90% of the worlds phone calls, Web traf-c, and investments are local, suggesting that Friedmanhas grossly exaggerated the signicance of the trends hedescribes: Despite talk of a new, wired world where in-formation, ideas, money, and people can move aroundthe planet faster than ever before, just a fraction of whatwe consider globalization actually exists.[5][6] Indian de-velopment journalist P. Sainath, Rural Aairs Editorfor The Hindu, says its not the world that is at, butThomas Friedmans brain is at.Some critics have pointed out that the book is writtenfrom an American perspective. Friedmans work historyhas been mostly with The New York Times, and this mayhave inuenced the way in which the book was written some would have preferred a book written in a moreinclusive voice.[7]

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has beencritical of Friedmans book. In Making GlobalizationWork, Stiglitz writes:

Friedman is right that there have been dra-matic changes in the global economy, in theglobal landscape; in some directions, the worldis much atter than it has ever been, with thosein various parts of the world being more con-nected than they have ever been, but the worldis not at [] Not only is the world not at: inmany ways it has been getting less at.

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

John Gray, formerly a School Professor of EuropeanThought at the London School of Economics and Politi-cal Science, wrote another critical review of Friedmansbook called The World is Round. In it, Gray con-rms Friedmans assertion that globalization is makingthe world more interconnected, and in some parts, richer,but disputes the notion that globalization makes the worldmore peaceful or free. Gray also declares, least of alldoes it make it at.[9]

Geographers on the whole have been particularly criti-cal of Friedmans writings, views inuenced by the largebody of work within their eld demonstrating the unevennature of globalization, the strong inuence place still hason peoples lives, and the dependent relationships thathave been established between the have and have-not re-gions in the current world-system. Geographer Harm deBlij has detailed these arguments for the general public inWhy Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing Amer-ica (2005) and The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny,and Globalizations Rough Landscape (2008).Physicist Frank Duarte criticizes the concept of a atworld, in the context of Kodaks demise, by writing: In2005 the hypothesis of a at world was used to supportthe vision behind the... digital transformation. The no-tion of a at world is completely erroneous even in ametaphorical sense... By the summer of 2007... nearly80 buildings in Kodak Park had already been demolished.This gave an ironic twist to the notion of a at world.[10]

3 Editions The World is Flat (1st ed.). Farrar, Straus andGiroux. 2005. ISBN 0-374-29288-4. [The orig-inal jacket illustration, reproducing the painting ITold You So by Ed Miracle, depicting a sailing shipfalling o the edge of the world, was changed dur-ing the print run due to copyright issues.[11] Theseissues were settled in March, 2006.[12]]

The World is Flat (Audiobook ed.). Audio Renais-sance. 2005. ISBN 1-59397-668-2.

4 5 EXTERNAL LINKS

The World is Flat: Updated and Expanded (Release2.0) (2nd ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2006.ISBN 0-374-29279-5.

The World is Flat: Further Updated and Expanded(Release 3.0) (2nd revised and expanded ed.). Far-rar, Straus and Giroux. 2007. ISBN 0-374-29278-7.

4 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 WorldIsn't Flat Foreignpolicy.com. (Subscription). Accessed2008-04-03.

[6] Pankaj Ghemawat (March 2007). Why the world isn't at.Foreign Policy. Accessed 2012-10-05.

[7] Peter Begley (2006). The World Is Flat: A Brief Historyof 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). TheWorld is Round. The New YorkReview of Books (Trans. Array, Web ed.). pp. 19.

[10] F. J. Duarte, Laser Physicist (Optics Journal, New York,2012) pp. 137-138.

[11] Justin Fox (October 17, 2005). A Painter Is Flat-OutFlimammed. Fortune Magazine. Retrieved 2007-10-21.

[12] http://humanlaw.typepad.com/humanlaw/2006/03/the_world_is_fl.html

5 External links Authors website

56 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses6.1 Text

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SummaryTen flatteners Proposed remedies Dell theory of Conflict Prevention

Critical reception Editions References External links Text and image sources, contributors, and licensesTextImagesContent license