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 Reading 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman is a long exercise, more than 12 hours of reading. I am listening to it on my iPod, downloaded from Audible.com (sorry, not yet released in the UK). It is the book that everybody spoke about in the TFN Event in June. It has started my mind in more than one ways. A forthcoming article on the hidden cost of language will be one of the more immediate offspring.
Amazon.co.uk writes in their synopsis: 'When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter Y2K to March 2004 , what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this flattening' of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in one place, has the world got too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner? In this brilliant new book, the award-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demystifies the brave new world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the 21st century; what it means to countries, companies, communities and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt.' This books is not just an outsourcing book. It describes how competitive advantages or location and proximity are diminishing rapidly. The main drivers here are, to my understanding, transaction costs. It simply costs less to work with somebody in India or China, to collaborate around the world, and to push work products around than 50 years ago, even 10 years ago. The rapid commoditization of bandwidth and computing equipment as well as the globalization of communication standards, starting with the most basic, the English language, are opening wormholes between relatively inexpensive labor and deep profit pools. |
We are reading 
