Thursday, October 11, 2007

The World is Flat....and Scary

I'd been meaning to read The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman for quite a while. But I kind of felt like it was one of those books I should read, but would be about as enjoyable as reading a David McCullough book (I know, I know, but his stuff puts me to sleep). But last week he was on the Colbert Report and was talking about how when you send your Toshiba laptop out to be repaired, it's actually a UPS person that fixes it. I was intrigued, so I thought I'd give it a try. I ended up getting the "updated and expanded" version, which is about 565 pages. Now, for me to read 565 pages of anything, it had better be entertaining, enlightening and life changing. I would say that this book was entertaining and enlightening, but not life changing, so I read the first couple hundred of pages and skimmed the rest.

Friedman basically says that many factors, including the web, outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring, have leveled the world's playing field. In order for us to compete in a flat world, we must become "untouchables," meaning we need to find jobs that cannot be outsourced, automated or digitized. Most of what he discussed was not news to me, but he has an interesting chapter called The Quiet Crisis, which talks about how our country is starting to lag behind in terms of producing people who can compete in this flat world. Compared to other countries, we have a lack of highly skilled scientists and engineers. He believes this is because young people are more interested in TV and video games than math and science. American children also lack ambition and creativity that is necessary to compete in a flat world.

It's an interesting book, and his writing and anecdotes are enjoyable which makes it less painful to read (or skim) 565 pages.

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