Once Again the World Is Flat Book

2005 English-language book by Thomas Friedman

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-commencement Century

Original 1st edition cover
Author	Thomas Friedman
Cover artist	I Told You Then, by Eastward.D. Miracle; 1976.
Country	United states of america
Language	English
Subject field	Globalization
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication appointment	April 5, 2005
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback) and audio-CD
Pages	488
ISBN	0-374-29288-four
OCLC	57202171
Dewey Decimal	330.90511 22
LC Course	HM846 .F74 2005
Preceded by	Longitudes and Attitudes
Followed by	Hot, Flat, and Crowded

The Earth Is Apartment: A Brief History of the 20-first Century is a volume by Thomas L. Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st century. The championship is a metaphor for viewing the earth equally a level playing field in terms of commerce, wherein all competitors, except for labor, have an equal opportunity. Every bit the commencement edition comprehend analogy indicates, the title too alludes to the perceptual shift required for countries, companies, and individuals to remain competitive in a global market in which historical and geographic divisions are, according to the author, becoming increasingly irrelevant.^{[ citation needed ]}

Friedman is a strong advocate of those changes^{[ which? ]}, calling himself a "gratis-trader" and a "compassionate flatist", and he criticizes societies that resist the changes. He emphasizes the inevitability of a rapid stride of change and the extent to which the emerging abilities of individuals and developing countries are creating many pressures on businesses and individuals in the United States; he has special communication for Americans and for the developing world. Friedman's is a pop piece of work^{[ citation needed ]} based on much personal research, travel, chat, and reflection. In his characteristic style, through personal anecdotes and opinions, he combines in The Earth Is Flat a conceptual analysis accessible to a broad public. The volume was first released in 2005, was later released equally an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006, and was yet once more released with additional updates in 2007 as "further updated and expanded: Release 3.0". The title was derived from a statement past Nandan Nilekani, former CEO of Infosys.^[1] The World Is Apartment won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Yr Award in 2005.^[2]

Summary [edit]

In his book The World Is Flat, Friedman recounts a journeying to Bangalore, Bharat, when he realized globalization has changed cadre economic concepts.^[3] In his opinion, that flattening is a product of the convergence of the personal figurer with fiber optic microcable with the rising of work flow software. Friedman termed the period Globalization iii.0, thereby differentiating it from the previous, Globalization ane.0, during which countries and governments were the main protagonists, and Globalization ii.0, during which multinational companies led the fashion in driving global integration.

Friedman recounts examples of companies based in India and China that according to him, by providing labor ranging from that of typists and call center operators to accountants and computer programmers, have become integral parts of complex global supply chains; such companies are Dell, AOL, and Microsoft. Friedman'south capitalist peace theory called Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention is discussed in the volume'south penultimate affiliate.

Ten flatteners [edit]

Friedman defines 10 "flatteners" that he sees as levelling the global playing field:

1. Collapse of the Berlin Wall – 11/9/89: Friedman called the flattener "When the walls came downward, and the windows came up." The event not only symbolized the end of the Cold War merely as well allowed people from the other side of the wall to bring together the economic mainstream. "11/9/89" is a give-and-take about the Berlin Wall's coming down, the "fall" of communism, and the affect that Windows-powered PCs (personal computers) had on the ability of individuals to create their own content and connect to ane another. At that point, the bones platform for the revolution to follow was created: the IBM PC, Windows, a graphical interface for word processing, punch-upward modems, a standardized tool for communication, and a global phone network.
2. Netscape – 8/9/95: Netscape went public at the price of $28. Netscape and the Spider web broadened the audition for the Net from its roots equally a communications medium used primarily past "early adopters and geeks" to something that fabricated the Internet attainable to everyone from five-year-olds to ninety-five-year-olds. The digitization that took identify meant that everyday occurrences such every bit words, files, films, music, and pictures could be accessed and manipulated on a figurer screen by all people across the world.
3. Workflow software: This is Friedman'southward take hold of-all for the standards and technologies that allowed piece of work to flow. It is the ability of machines to talk to other machines with no humans involved. Friedman believes the first three forces have get a "crude foundation of a whole new global platform for collaboration". This is complemented by the emergence of software protocols (SMTP – unproblematic postal service transfer protocol; HTML – the language that enabled anyone to blueprint and publish documents that could exist transmitted to and read on any figurer anywhere). The emergence of such software is the "Genesis moment of the flat world" and ways "that people can work with other people on more stuff than ever earlier". This created a global platform for multiple forms of collaboration, on which the next six flatteners depend.
4. Uploading: Uploading involves communities that upload and collaborate on online projects. Examples are open up source software, blogs, and Wikipedia. Friedman considers the phenomenon "the nigh disruptive force of all".
5. Outsourcing: Friedman argues that outsourcing has enabled companies to separate service and manufacturing activities into components that tin be subcontracted and performed in the nearly efficient, most cost-effective way. This process became easier with the mass distribution of fiber-optic cable during the introduction of the World wide web.
6. Offshoring: This is the internal relocation of a company's manufacturing or other processes to a foreign land to take advantage of less plush operations in that location. China'southward archway into the World Merchandise Organisation allowed for greater competition on the playing field. Now such countries as Malaysia, Mexico, and Brazil must compete against Red china and 1 another to have businesses offshore to them.
7. Supply-chaining: Friedman compares the modern retail supply chain to a river past describing Wal-Mart as the best example of a visitor that uses technology to streamline item sales, distribution, and aircraft.
8. Insourcing: Friedman uses UPS as a prime example for insourcing, whereby the visitor's employees perform services – beyond aircraft – for another visitor. For example, UPS repairs Toshiba computers on behalf of Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub by UPS employees.
9. Informing: Google and other search engines and Wikipedia are the prime examples. "Never before in the history of the planet have so many people – on their own – had the ability to observe so much information about then many things and about and then many other people", writes Friedman. He states that the growth of search engines is tremendous; for example, Friedman states, Google is "now processing roughly one billion searches per day, upward from 150 million just iii years ago".
10. "The Steroids": The steroids are wireless, Voice over IP (VoIP), and file sharing and are used on personal digital devices similar mobile phones, iPods, and personal digital assistants; on instant messaging; and on VoIP phones. Digital, mobile, personal, and virtual as well as all analog content and processes (from entertainment to photography, to word processing) can be digitized and therefore shaped, manipulated, and transmitted; and these processes can exist done at high speed with total ease; mobile can be washed anywhere and anytime past anyone, and can be washed to anyone.

Proposed remedies [edit]

Friedman believes that to fight the quiet crisis of a flattening earth, the Us workforce should keep updating its work skills. Making the workforce more than adaptable, Friedman argues, volition go on it more than employable. He as well suggests that the government brand information technology easier for people to switch jobs by making retirement benefits and health insurance less dependent on ane's employer and past providing insurance that would partly embrace a possible driblet in income when irresolute jobs. Friedman too believes in that location should be more inspiration for youth to become scientists, engineers, and mathematicians because of a decrease in the percentage of those professionals who are American.

Dell Theory of Disharmonize Prevention [edit]

The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, likewise known equally simply the Dell Theory, is a capitalist peace theory and an updated version of Friedman'due south previous "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention". According to Friedman:

The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, similar Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other every bit long every bit they are both part of the same global supply chain.^[4]

That is, every bit long as corporations accept major supply chain operations in countries other than that corporation's dwelling house land, those countries will never engage in armed conflicts. This is because of the economic interdependence between nations that arises when a large corporation (such as Dell) has supply chain operations in multiple global locations and when developing nations (in which supply concatenation operations commonly take place) are reluctant to surrender their newfound wealth.

In his previous volume The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued that no 2 nations with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one some other; this was known as the Golden Arches theory. Subsequently, Friedman upgraded that theory into the "Dell Theory of Disharmonize Prevention" past saying that people or nations do non simply want to have a better standard of living every bit symbolized by a McDonald's franchise in their downtown but besides desire to have that lump of the labor sector that is created past globalization. That is, developing nations do non want to risk the trust of the multinational companies that venture into their markets and include them in the global supply chain.

Thomas Friedman also warns that the Dell theory should non be interpreted as a guarantee that nations that are securely involved in global supply chains will non get to war with each other. It means, rather, that the governments of those nations and their citizens will accept very heavy economic costs to consider as they contemplate the possibility of war. Such costs include long-term loss of the land's profitable participation in the global supply chain.

This theory relates with how conflict prevention occurred between India and Pakistan in their 2001–2002 nuclear standoff, wherein India was at adventure of losing its global partners. The relationship betwixt the People's Republic of Cathay and Taiwan was also cited as an example of that theory: both countries have strong supply relations with each other, and a state of war betwixt the two seems very unlikely today.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Critical reception [edit]

The World Is Flat received generally positive popular and critical reception also equally some negative criticism, peppered with doubt.

The Washington Post chosen the volume an "engrossing tour" and an "enthralling read". The review closed with, "We've no existent idea how the 21st century's history volition unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book volition certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through".^[5]

An opposing viewpoint was found in a 2007 Foreign Policy magazine article in which Professor Pankaj Ghemawat argued that 90% of the earth'southward phone calls, Web traffic, and investments are local, suggesting that Friedman has grossly exaggerated the significance of the trends he describes: "Despite talk of a new, wired globe where information, ideas, money, and people can move around the planet faster than e'er before, simply a fraction of what we consider globalization actually exists."^{[6] [seven]}

Some critics accept pointed out that the book is written from an American perspective. Friedman'due south work history has been mostly with The New York Times, and that may have influenced the fashion the book was written – some would have preferred a book written in a more "inclusive phonation".^[8]

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has been critical of Friedman'south volume:

Friedman is correct that there take been dramatic changes in the global economy, in the global landscape; in some directions, the earth is much flatter than it has ever been, with those in various parts of the globe being more continued than they accept always been, just the globe is not flat ... Not but is the world non flat: in many ways, it has been getting less apartment.

Richard Florida expresses similar views in his 2005 Atlantic commodity "The World Is Spiky".^[9]

John Greyness, formerly a Schoolhouse Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Scientific discipline, wrote another critical review of Friedman's book called "The Globe Is Circular". In information technology, Gray confirms Friedman's exclamation that globalization is making the globe more interconnected and, in some parts, richer just disputes the notion that globalization makes the world more peaceful or freer. Gray too declares, "least of all does it make it flat".^[x]

Geographers on the whole take been particularly disquisitional of Friedman'southward writings, views influenced by the large body of work within their field demonstrating the uneven nature of globalization, the strong influence identify all the same has on people's lives, and the dependent relationships that have been established between the take and accept-not regions in the electric current earth-system. Geographer Harm de Blij detailed those arguments for the general public in Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America (2005) and The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Mural (2008).

Editions [edit]

• The World is Flat (1st ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2005. ISBN0-374-29288-four. [The original jacket illustration, reproducing the painting I Told You So past Ed Miracle, depicting a sailing send falling off the edge of the world, was changed during the print run due to copyright issues.^[11] These problems were settled in March, 2006.^[12]]
• The World is Apartment (Audiobook ed.). Audio Renaissance. 2005. ISBN1-59397-668-2.
• The World is Apartment: Updated and Expanded (Release two.0) (2nd ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2006. ISBN0-374-29279-v.
• The World is Apartment: Further Updated and Expanded (Release iii.0) (2d revised and expanded ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2007. ISBN978-0-374-29278-2.

Meet as well [edit]

Apartment Classroom Project

References [edit]

1. ^ Daniel H. Pink (May 2005). "Why the World Is Flat". WIRED . Retrieved 2014-12-10 .
2. ^ "Business books of the decade; The World Is Flat". The Financial Times Ltd . Retrieved 31 July 2015.
3. ^ Warren Bass (April iii, 2005). "The Smashing Leveling". Washington Mail . Retrieved 2007-09-06 .
4. ^ The Earth is Flat (ISBN 1-59397-668-2), Thomas L. Friedman, pg 421
5. ^ "The Great Leveling". The Washington Post. 2005-04-03. Retrieved 2013-11-26 .
6. ^ Pankaj Ghemawat (March/April 2007). "Why the World Isn't Flat" Foreignpolicy.com. (Subscription). Accessed 2008-04-03.
7. ^ Pankaj Ghemawat (March 2007). Why the world isn't flat. Foreign Policy. Accessed 2012-10-05.
8. ^ Peter Begley (2006). "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century". Accessed 2006-11-06.
9. ^ Richard Florida (October 2005). "The earth is spiky". Atlantic Monthly. Accessed 2009-05-09.
10. ^ Grey, John (2005). "The World is Round". The New York Review of Books (Trans. Assortment, Web ed.). pp. 1–9.
11. ^ Justin Fox (Oct 17, 2005). "A Painter Is Flat-Out Flimflammed". Fortune Magazine . Retrieved 2007-10-21 .
12. ^ "The World Is Flat - Ed Phenomenon and defendants settle case".

External links [edit]

• Author's website

bennerfaily1940.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat

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