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THE WORLD IS FLAT By Thomas L. Friedman
“In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears – and that is our problem.” So writes Thomas Friedman in his latest best-selling masterpiece, The World Is Flat. It’s not often that a writer both teaches me and entertains me at this level. What a thinker Friedman is! For anyone interested in understanding the world in a fuller way, his books are a must read in my opinion.
Friedman explains, “It is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world." He explains how the world became flat, how the over-investment during the Dot Com boom led to the laying of fiber optic cable which then was sold to places like India for pennies on the dollar during the Dot Com bust – thereby flattening the world for thousands of Indians.
He says that he hopes we are defined not by 9/11, but by 11/9 - the day the Berlin Wall came down and the flattening and opening of the world gained steam. He offers the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, that no two countries that are part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they’re both part of that same chain.
There’s so much here, so much to learn. I highly recommend Thomas Friedman’s nonfiction bestseller in hardback, The World Is Flat. On the Book Beat for KSL Newsradio 1160, I’m Amanda Dickson.
