The World Is Flat (edit title)

• Rated 5 stars

“Just finished ch.1 (While I was sleeping). Really thoughtful, amusing, and thrilling! If you want to get an idea of how the world is chaning rapidly (in all aspects) now a days. The World Is Flat is for you. [Update] This is just awesome, the quality and quantity of information in this book is dazzling! I am starting to feel and know the world I am living because of this book!”

• Rated 4 stars

“Interesting perspective on technology process and methods.”

• Rated 4 stars

“Insightful but yeah, slow at points with too many examples given for one simple point.”

• Rated 4 stars

“Academic and slow at points but worth the wade through to get to the nuggets of insight Friedman brings.”

• Rated 5 stars

“WOW! A must read to help open your eyes to the flattening of the world. We are in for some BIG changes!”

• Rated 4 stars

“A very good portrayal of how geographical distance is no longer a disabler (rather an enabler, e.g. in the case of paired U.S. - Indian co-workers tending to projects round-the-clock).”

• Rated 5 stars

“My first REVIEW: The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

Important Note: This is my first of what I hope will be many reviews. I have no idea what I'm doing so if you want to skip all the verbage and just see what the heck I really thought of the book, you can just look at the end of the post and get the most important bits.

Now, if you know me at all you know that most of my reading is fiction, fiction, and more fiction. But from time to time I have a craving for a good hard read on current events.

The craving came. And I succumbed to it. Amazingly, I picked a pretty good book to satisfy my yearnings.

The World is Flat is an excellent read with a bad title. Unfortunately, the author is in LOVE with the title and spends the first 200 or so pages reiterating over and over again how the world is now flat. This is the only part of the book that I found to be tedious. Ok, ok, I get it. You thought of a clever euphemism for the fact that the competitive playing field is being levelled worldwide. Please don't beat me over the head with it.

If I were naming the book, I'd have called it "The Technological Revolution: How the U.S. Created Its Own Competition and Why We Should be Glad We Did."

Ok, so succinct names aren't really my thing, but my title really captures the essense of Friedman's book.

The focus on the book is how formerly bassackward countries such as India and China have taken advantage of the tremendous telecommunications and computing power of today and leveraged it into jobs and a high growth economy.

It demonstrates why this is actually good in many ways for the United States and why protectionism (of jobs) is a seriously bad idea. The book also makes policy recommendations as well as personal ones that should give U.S. citizens some idea of how to cope with the changes that are going to rock the world.

If you have children, I'd highly recommend reading this book because it clearly demonstrates that our children are going to be competing in a new world. I fear that they are not prepared for this world and won't be unless today's parents wake up and smell the coffee. Our sons and daughters will be competing against the best of the best in China, India, and other developing nations. And these people are hungry. Hungry for the best education and the best jobs. Unfortunately, they are also becoming better educated in the arenas that count the most - math and science. Friedman's book discusses this in detail and as a parent of young children, I found it very useful to know.

Friedman also discusses terrorism at length and the underlying causes of terrorism. He describes how in the Islamic terrorist's mind there is a huge conflict. On one hand, they exalt their own religion as highly superior and on the other, they see that their living standards and opportunities don't begin to compare by countries being run by the "infidel" (that would be us. And Europe.) It's scary stuff, but Friedman manages to get to the heart of the matter in a way that is easy to comprehend.

The World is Flat is an economics book at its heart, which may be a turn off to some readers. However, it is very, very liberally sprinkled with anecdotes and examples that are enlightening and which make the book very readable even by people without a background in business or economics. Of course I have a background in both so take this insight with a grain of salt.

The only negative, beyond the title, that I found in this book is that the last 100 pages or so were much less broadly applicable and interesting than the first 300. There's one chapter called "How Companies Cope" that I think can safely be skipped in its entirety unless you happen to be a manager of a company or are planning to become one. As a housewife, I am neither, and I found this chapter to be the least interesting of the book.

So, I haven't really put together a rating system for non-fiction so I'm going to wing it here. I also haven't figured out how the heck to make a star. Darn. Well, I'll use asteriks instead until I discover the magical secret.

On a 5 ***** scale with ***** being best:

Engaging: ***
Informative: ****
Importance of the Message: *****
Work to Value Ratio (i.e. is it worth the time and effort to read?) : 0.75 (1 is best)
Political bias: Balanced
Deserves to be a Bestseller: Yes

”

• Rated 3 stars

“The world may be flat but this is a really thick book. This book does provide readers with a clear big picture understanding of the globalization era and how the flattening of the world impacts on every aspect of society.
Although this an easy read it is not the most exciting book in the world. If any advisor would like to borrow it, please let me know. It may give me the hurry up I need to finish it.
Rocky


Check out this link for a summary mind-map : http://www.loosetooth.com/Viscom/gf/worldisflat.htm
”

• Rated 4 stars

“Excellent book. However new expanded version makes it a much harder read. Sometimes less is more.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Great book. It's amazing how Thomas Friedman perceived the evolution of the world due to technology. A good way to look back how our lives revolved from simple manual things into an automated, one-click type of lifestyle. ”