Intensely Focused

The premise is that due in large part to technology the world is becoming flatter. [author: Thomas Friedman] clearly thinks this is a great thing with very few drawbacks. In fact, he doesn't address any drawback except in passing (other than the random aside that terrorists can use the Internet to network too) until the penultimate chapter.

This is clearly meant to be a book about how globalization affects the individual. Friedman tries to show this by sharing anecdotes and interviews but nearly every single person he talks to and every story he shares is about a founder or head of a company and the few that aren't deal with people who are no more than 3 levels from the top of the company. Hardly "everyman." The book has a lot to say about what CEOs and entrepreneurs can do to stay competitive (mainly keep innovating, not exactly a new idea) but there is very little about what the rest of us can do besides "continue to try to make ourselves employable."

He proposes that companies make sure their employees are employable and in return employees give their loyalty. This seems unrealistic given today’s business climate.

He views the Internet as a great leveling force, but mentions the censorship in China only in passing and doesn’t discuss how it affects his theory. I believe he thinks the situation is temporary but as major companies seem happy to cooperate with filtering, I don't see change in the near future.

Friedman is also very big on the idea of globalization as an economic equalizer. He goes on at length about how it's a force for good because it dramatically raises the standard of living in developing nations, particularly India, but it isn't until the penultimate chapter that he admits that's only true for about 2% of India's population. And while he's busy talking about what a great opportunity it is in terms of income and how Indians no longer have to emigrate to have a much improved standard of living and that even those abroad can have access to hometown newspapers ,etc. he doesn't seem to realize the contradiction when he mentions a man who started an elementary school for India's Untouchable class, hoping to prove that with the right education they can be just like the higher castes but who then must to move elsewhere after they are educated because their last name reveals their caste. While he was trying to argue that the Internet will eventually bring more income equality it seemed to me that it made the rich richer and the poor were still left behind. (And never a word about the exponential difference between CEOs and the lowest paid employee). It’s good that high caste Indians have a better standard of living but we're still seeing the standards improve for the people at the top and not much change for everyone else.

He talks about Wal-Mart’s "just in time" model of business and in his penultimate chapter he does address some of the problems. A global supply chain can be decimated by war, disease, or natural disaster and if things are only delivered "just in time" companies can be completely screwed. The advantage of this is that it makes countries think twice about going to war (specifically countries like India/Pakistan and China/Taiwan) because they know if they screw up the global supply chain companies will be extremely wary of ever investing in that country again. But Friedman extols the virtues of Wal-Mart's use of RFID technology without mentioning the concerns of privacy advocates.

I think one of Friedman's biggest failings is that so much of the book is about the Internet as a great equalizer and there is not one word about Net Neutrality. The book was updated, revised and re released in April of 2006 so Net Neutrality was a known issue.

Having said all of that, the book was still an interesting read. I learned a lot of random things about various companies.