Summary and Analysis of The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Based on the Book by Thomas L. Friedman

Worth Books

• Publisher: Worth Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781504044103
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Globalisierung

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Thomas L. Friedman 's book.
Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. 
 
This short summary and analysis of The World Is Flat 3.0 by Thomas L. Friedman includes:

• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter summaries
• Detailed timeline of important events
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work

 
About The World Is Flat 3.0 by Thomas L. Friedman:
 
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Thomas L. Friedman imagines himself a modern-day Columbus, exploring a new world created by a global economy. He travels from Bangalore to Bentonville, interviewing key figures in the rise of globalization, outsourcing, offshoring, and supply chain management.
 
Like great explorers before him, Friedman spins tales of vast wealth and freedoms made possible by advances in technology. But here, too, there be dragons: foreign competition, educational failures, governmental incompetence, and the specter of 9/11 and terrorism are the ugly flip side of crowd-sourced technological wonders.
 
The World Is Flat is an essential work for anyone interested in the impact of globalization.
 
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.

Summary

Introduction to the Paperback Edition

Thomas L. Friedman knows people are wondering why he has updated his book for the second time in two years. His reply: because he could. In an example of the technological changes he discusses in The World Is Flat 3.0, Friedman says the publishing industry has sped up the process so much that he is now able to revise a book quickly, whereas before it wouldn’t have been possible. Another reason for the second update is that he wanted to address questions from parents and educators on how best to raise children in this flat world.

How the World Became Flat

One: While I Was Sleeping

Christopher Columbus, of oceans blue and 1492, thought he could find a better passage to India. Spain wanted in on the spice trade, so they funded his voyage. It was lucky, then, that he reached land before running out of food and water. He declared the natives “Indians” and proved that the world was round, despite some sketchy cartography.

In the present day, Indians of a very different kind greet Westerners—in the form of companies like IBM, HP, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments, as well as consumers in need of a helping tech hand—through phone lines and fiber-optic networks created at great expense and sold cheaply in the early 2000s. These Indians are the first of many people freed from the accident of geography. They handle the work that Americans used to do—in fields ranging from accounting to radiology to journalism to tutoring kids. Whatever work can be digitized and outsourced, will be—even if only a portion of the process is sent to India (or Australia, China, or anyplace else where it’s daytime during the American nighttime). Friedman uses the example of making dinner plans: Sure, you need cooks and waiters in the United States, but someone in Bangalore can easily take your reservation, assign you a table, and store your contact information.

The reason is simple: Indian workers can be paid less than American workers. In India, there is an entire system set up to hire and train call center employees—including classes on how to develop an American accent. The people seeking these jobs are educated and upwardly mobile, the type of Indians who might’ve immigrated to the United States in the past, seeking advancement. Now, they can have a successful American job without having to leave their families and culture.

It’s not just America, either. Friedman discusses Japan outsourcing jobs to China, an odd concept for historical enemies. Chinese workers don’t seem bothered by the old animosity, though—they’re focused on the bottom line. Their plan is to earn money and learn the newest technology and business … so that eventually they can stop working for American and Japanese firms and start their own.

Outsourcing isn’t the only kind of sourcing. JetBlue uses home workers in Utah to handle reservations. McDonald’s has people in other states taking drive-through orders. The military flies drones in Iraq from a base in Nevada.

The virtual, collaborative community we call “the world” is flat.

Need to Know: Opportunity costs fell so massively in the decade between the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the events of 9/11 that we might as well call it a new era of discovery, a world gone from round to flat. Friedman believes that this is a watershed development in history, akin to the Industrial Revolution.

Two: The Ten Forces That Flattened the World

Friedman believes that ten flatteners led to our current era of globalization:

1. The Berlin Wall fell, enabling millions of people to join in the world economy in a new way. Around the same time, Microsoft Windows was created, giving all people, everywhere, the ability to create content on their own.
2. Tim Berners-Lee and others developed the World Wide Web, allowing people to use the Internet to share information. With the addition of Netscape, a browser that let different systems interoperate, the threat of proprietary standards ebbed. People using any type of computer were able to access the Web. This led to the dot-com bubble, and to massive investment in fiber-optic cable, optimistically laid to handle infinitely growing traffic.
3. Work flow software was developed, breaking tasks into smaller pieces using an alphabet soup of standards—TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, XML, AJAX—to hand to teams around the world. This enabled work to happen at all hours of the day. It also broke internal business departments out of their specialized silos.
4. Communities began forming online, with people uploading and sharing content and new creations without specialized support. This allowed the technical-minded to gel into their own groups of free-software developers, c...

Table of contents

• Title
• Disclaimer
• Contents
• Context
• Overview
• Summary
• Timeline
• Cast of Characters
• Direct Quotes and Analysis
• Trivia
• What’s That Word?
• Critical Response
• About Thomas L. Friedman
• For Your Information
• Bibliography
• Copyright