The World Is Flat -- Book Review

Author: Thomas Friedman

It is the U.S economic crisis and I am trying real hard to get to the core of the problem and my limited (or lack of) economic knowledge was proving to be a huge dampener. My friend gave some pointers and during that discussion, he pointed me in the direction of this book. I downloaded a copy of this book and read a few pages right away. The introduction was immensely impressive and luckily for me, I found a copy of this book in my company’s library.

The main theme of this book is about how the great technological leaps of the last 2 to 3 decades have made the world an even playing field. Friedman describes the various flattening forces – from the fall of the Berlin wall to the rise of google – that made this even playing field possible. While I was aware of some of these things (Outsourcing, off-shoring), some of the things (in-forming) were completely new to me. The various real life examples that Friedman gives are what makes this book a great read. Be it the person from Lebanon who starts his own business there or the person in Karnataka who works for the uplifting of untouchables, the examples provide a very clear idea of these concepts and the advantages of a flat world.

Like everything else in life, the flat world also brings its own set of problems to the table. One of the major problems we will have to face is that of terrorists communicating with each other in the same seamless fashion that people of the world are able to communicate because of the changed playing field. The author does an excellent job in pointing out the issues that come out of a flat world and also offers some practical solutions for solving these issues.

Two things struck me during the reading of this book and made me think quite a bit.

1) The similarity of ideas between those presented in this book and that of Obama’s plans. Having actively followed the U.S election campaigns, the similarity between these two was striking and did not allow me to brush aside the similarity as something coincidental. Has Obama read this book and been influenced by it so much that it creeps its way into his plans?

2) The economic meltdown in U.S, the reasons for the meltdown and the appearance of the same pattern in India. When people who have climbed to the top through hard work & perseverance begins to forget/ignore the basic tenets and start to assume that their stay in the top is assured, the great fall to the bottom is not far away. This is a theme that is clearly laid out in this book. The present generation in India seems to be bracing itself for this fall because it has started assuming that getting a job or making money is an easy task and starting to forget the basic tenets that brought us to this position in the first place.

One of the best things that have happened to me after reading this book is that it made me realize the power of the flat world and enabled me to think of ways to harness this power for my personal and professional growth. When a book does this to you, it can be safely assumed that the book has indeed left an indelible mark on you.