He has no point
The world is flat? What do you meant the world is flat? I tried reading some of The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. All I could get out of it is that genius no longer excels, while dufuses abound all over cyberspace. Crap. I have seen the dufuses, the spammers, the porn sites, the trashy material. But I've also seen top notch intellectual material, and know that it is to be found if you know where to look.
And the book was boring. It soon dawned on me that the author is not talking about "flat earth" theories, such as what Mark Levin aka "the Great One" calls "flat earth, no growth, enviro-Marxism", or the ruling theory of biological evolution which dismisses intelligent design, or any other refuted tradition that dies hard. No, Thomas L Friedman ... Read More
Leveling of the Playing Field
Friedman has taken the different trends towards globalization and connected the dots to form a coherent view of a flat world. Flat is a metaphor indicating that the playing field has become leveled. He describes the events leading to the creation of such a flat playing field. And how countries like China and India used this to their advantage.
As many assumed, Globalization did not stop with the dot com bust in 2000. In fact, it strengthened because of that. The dot com boom resulted in an over investment in fiber optics resulting in excessive bandwidth which benefited India. This enabled outsourcing of work from US and Europe to India. He uses comparisons on how, earlier in the last century, US was the second buyer of India's brains ... Read More
Excellent information but less than fun to read.
The book is excellent. Friedman describes the way globalization started and where we are now. He has obviously done his homework on the subject.
The only (minor) complaint I have is that there were times when I felt like I was being beaten over the head with anecdotal evidence. Enough! I get it! Let's move on!
It Is Your Responsibility as a Human Being to Read this Book and Make a Difference in The World
Thomas Friedman brilliantly shows how the forces of globalization have connected the world in ways never possible before. The walls, ceilings, and even floors that once separated people, societies, and countries have been flattened out. Now, a single individual has more power than any other time in history.
We must make use of all these new possibilities to succeed in a world that is more competitive and more challenging than ever before.
You have to establish a competitive advantage that differentiates you from the rest of this world. If you don't, you can't survive.
This next 50 years are the most crucial time in the history of our time. We have the opportunity to end poverty, diseases, wars, ignorance, greed, ... Read More
Simplifies the complex, much to its undoing
Over a thousand reviews posted for a single book are bound to reflect a variety of opinions. But few books can elicit the repetitive and inconsistent nods present here. Most of these reviews fall into two groups: the first classifies The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century as well-written and highly informative; the second classifies it as too verbose and oversimplified. I have to say, both groups are right.
They are right because I found myself reflecting both sentiments as I read the book.
The first four chapters of the book recount the rise of globalization and the forces behind it. This accounts for about the first third of the book's pages, and I found its packaging of the complex forces behind globalization to be highly informative and easy to understand. ... Read More
