Flattened

As a follow up to recent post on globalisation, I want to talk a little about Tom Friedman's Flat World. There is a lot of great reportage in this book - although it's a little breathless. Tom doesn't present a world with many choices in - except winning the economic race or losing it. And whilst he states that he is a technological determinist but not historical one, it's kinda hard to see the difference in practice. The effect is a Marx in negative - with globalised, hypercompetitive capitalism taking the place of a world socialism utopia.

If you take the book as a wake call to its American audience then it's in favour of much good stuff (lifelong learning, improved education opportunities, industrial deregulation). Given the prominence of globalisation in the executive worldview (which is the fancy English word for Weltanschung), it will probably be remembered as the business book of the decade (in the same way that this was for the 80s and this was for the 90s). However the vivid sense of place that Friedman's writing conveys together with the character vignettes set it apart from the prescriptive egoism of much of the "Business" shelves*.



*Friedman, Gladwell, Surowiecki - all journalists. Not consultants. Not retired CEOs. Instead writers who can string words together in a compelling way for regular people to read rather just ambitious middle managers & paranoid executives eager for the next big idea to pilfer.