3 of 3 members found this review helpful.
“Writing this review proves Mr. Friedman's point in his thought-provoking book, "The World is Flat." One of the things flattening the word, drawing people across the world together in a more level platform for collaboration and competition, is the ability of more and more people to create their own digital content and upload it on the internet to be accessible by the rest of the world (like wikipedia, or this review).
Mr. Friedman is an excellent journalist and his book is full of wonderful observations of how modern information and communication technology have changed the world in a fundamental way over the last few years. His observations are the kind of things Alvin and Heidi Toffler have been predicting since the 1980's - what they called the Third Wave, Tom Friedman calls Globalization 3.0.
The important thing to take away from the book is that this change is, to a large, extent inevitable and it is important for us as a society to recognize it and adapt to it. The new, flat world comes with dangers (increased collaboration among terrorists), uncertainty (changing labor force and job landscape), but also great opportunity to innovate and collaborate on a global scale.
Unfortunately, Friedman's policy recommendations for government are nothing more than re-hashed 15 year old, center-left talking points (capitalism and free trade, but with increase federal funding for education and research, universal healthcare, and environmentalism). He does little more than hint at the fundamental political realignment that must occur for our politics to meaningful, as described by the Tofflers (see my review of Creating a New Civilization: The politics of the Third Wave). Nonetheless, his journalism is thorough and informative and his observations on how and why the world has changed and is changing will be helpful to any citizen trying to make sense of the Information Age.
Do yourself a favor and read this book!”
James B wrote this review Saturday, December 8 2007.
(
reply |
permalink )
