The World Is Flat

Thomas Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, traveled to India in the early 2000s to film a program about technology. In Bangalore, he spoke with executives at a major Indian software company and left feeling that the rules of the economy had changed without the American public noticing. It's a useful opening scene because it shows an experienced reporter admitting that he was caught by surprise.

One of those executives said the playing field was being leveled. Friedman took the phrase literally and turned it into an image: the world was becoming flat, meaning that people from very different places could increasingly compete and collaborate on more equal terms.

Published in 2005, the book attempts to explain how this happened, what it means, and how individuals, companies, and countries can respond. It reads like reporting, packed with interviews and travel, in the accessible language of a newspaper column.

Its central argument is that information technology and the opening of markets have reduced distances, and that this shift benefits those who know how to take advantage of it.

To organize the story, the author divides globalization into three periods. The first, beginning with the age of exploration in the late fifteenth century and lasting until around 1800, was driven by countries. Those with greater power and more ships conquered and traded. It's a useful teaching framework, and like any framework, it comes with approximate dates and exceptions.

The second phase, from 1800 to 2000, was driven by companies. Multinationals connected markets, first through ships and trains, then through telephones, computers, and fiber-optic cables. Communication took less time and cost less money.

The third phase, beginning around 2000, would be driven by individuals. For the first time, an ordinary person with a computer and an internet connection could collaborate and compete globally, regardless of the country they lived in.

This idea of global individuals is at the heart of the book and explains why it talks so much about small businesses, freelancers, and young professionals.

The book lists ten forces that, in Friedman's view, leveled the playing field. The first combines the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which opened markets and changed politics, with the arrival of personal computers with windows-based interfaces, which made them easier to use. The second is Netscape's 1995 initial public offering, which helped popularize the internet. Notice how the author mixes political events, such as the end of the Cold War, with technological developments, such as the web browser.

The third is workflow software: programs that allow different systems to communicate with one another. With these tools, a task can be split into parts, each completed somewhere different, without the customer noticing.

The fourth is open collaboration, in which communities of volunteers produce things like free software and online encyclopedias. Anyone can contribute and benefit.

Together, these forces made communication cheaper and opened the door to working with people anywhere on the planet.