Is the World Flat?

Thomas Friedman came upon the material for his book The World is Flat by accident while travelling in India with the Discovery Times. While in India, Friedman visited Infosys Technologies Limited; it was from a conversation he had with the company's CEO, Nandan Nilekani, that Friedman developed his thesis for The World is Flat. Friedman argues that the global competitive playing field has been levelled. Thus, the world is flat. What he means by this is that a much larger group of people can collaborate and compete for global knowledge. Friedman's goal in writing this book was to understand how the world became flat as well as to recognize the consequences of the increasing rate of globalization and the flattening world.

In the first part of the book, Friedman explains how the world became flat. He argues that there are ten forces that led to the flattening of the world: the collapse of the Berlin Wall; Netscape; work flow software; uploading; outsourcing; off shoring; in sourcing; in-forming; and the steroids. Aware that these ten factors could not have caused the world to become flat on their own, Friedman goes on to explain what he describes as the triple convergence. Friedman explains that the triple convergence is the way in which the ten forces converged to further flatten the global playing field. Friedman goes on to examine the way in which countries will adapt to the triple convergence in what he calls the great sorting out.

Friedman uses the second part of the book to explore America and the flat world. He uses David Ricardo's free-trade theory of comparative advantage to argue that free trade is still in the United States best interest. Ricardo's theory stipulates that is each nation specializes in the production of goods in which it has a comparative cost advantage and then trades with other nations for the goods in which they specialize, there will be an overall gain in trade, and overall income levels should rise in each trading economy (264). According to Friedman, Ricardo is still right. It is in this section of the book that Friedman describes the right stuff to make it in a flat world; arguing that there are five skill sets or attitudes needed: the ability to learn how to learn; navigation skills; CQ +PQ > IQ; Plays well with others; and the right brain stuff.

According to Thomas Friedman, American's are not taking advantage of their potential to enter the flat world. To explain why this is, he describes six dirty little secrets: the numbers gap, the education gap at the top, the ambition gap, the education gap at the bottom, the funding gap, and the infrastructure gap. Friedman defines what it means to be progressive in a flat world as compassionate flatism. He outlines five action areas involved in compassionate flatism: leadership, muscles, good fat, social activism, and parenting.

Friedman discusses developing countries and the flat world in the next section of his book. He argues that these countries must develop ...