World is flat

I read this book ..
The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. It has been over a year and a half since I wrote that review and in that interim, Friedman's book has managed to sell about two million copies.


His vision of the globalized world is a deeply skewed account of globalization, often obsessed with the successful multinational corporations of India, the teeming engineers, and the "level" playing field. Not to mention the preoccupations with the limitless opportunities for profit for people who are intelligent or choose to invest in schooling, all the unmitigated fascination with gadgetry, and unbridled confidence in technology.

Even a familiarity with the culture is missing, only rearing up its head in the Middle East to let you in on the fact that its only the backward culture that's holding the Arab civilization back from the wonderful riches on the flat world. There are no losers in the flat world, only people experiencing a time lag in seeing their riches come their way, for the global underclass will be able to educate their kids better and they will eventually be able to get better jobs and better pay. But as the authors astutely point out, there is also a vast global underclass whose resources are being pillaged and leeched ruthlessly by global corporations, leaving them with little or nothing to proceed with.

Friedman recognises that for many in the developed world this looks like a threat, but for him the spread of prosperity is overwhelmingly an opportunity. He is very good at explaining complex phenomena in simple terms, but the results are not always pretty. Pages are littered with one-word paragraphs and unnecessary italics, and he comes up with annoying coinages - The Lexus and the Olive Tree had "globalution"; this one includes "glocalisation" (incorporating globalised techniques and technology into local practice) - and glib catalogues of factors ("The Ten Flatteners"; "The Three Convergences").

Sometimes, words fail him. Wondering why it is that some countries sustain economic development and others don't, he says: "The only answer I have been able to find is something that cannot be defined: I call it the intangible things." Yeah, I can see that.

Metaphors and images play an important part in the book, but are barely controlled. Discussing modern China's vast hunger for energy, he can warn of "courting both an environmental and geopolitical whirlwind". Clinton under America was seen by the rest of the world as Puff the Magic dragon; after 9/11, it was "Godzilla with an arrow in his shoulder". Even the controlling metaphor, of a world no longer round but flat, seems misconceived: in a flat world, parts of the planet that are now next to each other would be thousands of miles apart. What he actually wants to say is that the world, while still round, is shrinking and getting smoother: but I can see that "The World Is a Gobstopper" would be a problematic title.

More important than the infelicities are the holes in Friedman's argument. He skates over some issues, such as the environmental costs or constraints on globalisation: how do we come up with the energy to fuel this new prosperity, and what effect will climate change have? Sometimes he shoots himself in the foot, as when he uses Starbucks to illustrate how the enlightened modern multinational allows customers to tailor products to their own tastes. The opportunity to order a skinny latte with cinnamon topping, I'm afraid, doesn't make up for the decline of cafés that serve really decent coffee. Also, he lacks perspective: many of the phenomena he discusses have arisen in the last five years. Who's to know what is a genuine trend and what is a blip?

The most serious problem is that he underestimates some of the obstacles. Friedman admits that the under-skilled and under-educated will be under-employed in this new world, and espouses "compassionate flatism" (eeurgh) - social democracy, a free market with safety nets. But he writes as though the new under-class will be a small minority; and as though the tax burden imposed by them will not be any kind of barrier to investment.

Despite all these problems, The World Is Flat works well as an invigorating sketch of the world to come. Above all, it makes clear how far the issues politicians argue about are removed from the problems and opportunities we're really presented with.