This is an interesting book, with some interesting and important points but it seems repetitively too long. It tells of the history of the world in innovation, economics, politics and education since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Since that time many events and innovations have created a "flat world" where we can more easily communicate, collaborate and world together globally. This is exciting and has opened up wonderful opportunities, but is has also created new competition and potential threats.

At the same time technology has improved the way we communicate (internet, blogging, collaborative workflow software, outsourcing, supply chain management, etc.), countries and individuals who have not previously been a part of the same market are now competing with each other in a more free and open world. Particularly interesting were some of the stories about work going to India and China where there are many people willing to work hard.

For the most part I think the thesis of this book was for Americans to be aware of the changes rapidly taking place so that we see the importance of working hard and continuing to learn so that we can still compete in the globally flat world.

My favorite chapter of the book was about education: The Right Stuff--Tubas and Test Tubes (page 308). This chapter focuses on the importance of learning how to learn so that we know how to continue to learn and progress in a quickly changing world. Passion and curiosity may be more important than IQ.

There are a lot of other interesting points he makes about how new technologies and convenience have changed the way we communicate with each other--we don't talk to the people around us as much because we can be always connected to anyone anywhere. Just as many people are using new technologies to collaborate on new and important business and research others are using the same tools to harm other individuals and nations. The world has become flat so quickly that no one really knows how to control or protect people from some of the potential problems.

Interesting thoughts. Good book. We really are all connected! Hopefully we'll prepare and use these opportunities for good!

Nửa đầu sách hoàn toàn không để lại ấn tượng.

Tác giả chỉ nêu lại những thứ rất-quen-thuộc trong thời đại mình: chuỗi cung, mạng máy tính, UPS, outsourcing, insourcing, e-commerce... (đúng tinh thần "Tóm lược Lịch sử Thế giới TK XXI" - nhiều quá không nhớ nỗi ^^!).
Người đọc thì chán còn tác giả thì kể như "OMG! I have never seen anything like it before. It's a miracle!" =.=

Những phần còn lại rất hay, bớt cường điệu hơn, đa phần về nước Trung Quờ như cạnh tranh, tài nguyên, chiến tranh, chuỗi cung ứng. Mà đúng thiệt vậy, bởi thật sự anh thứ CS là tâm điểm, trigger của rất nhiều vấn đề hiện tại trên thế giới. Đặc biệt thích đoạn tác giả miêu tả mối quan hệ TQ và Mỹ: Ban đầu tôi sợ sói, sau này tôi khiêu vũ cùng sói và ngay bây giờ tôi muốn trở thành sói.

12 năm sau ngày sách ra mắt, dù kỷ nguyên số đang diễn ra cực mạnh, công cụ hôm nay sẽ lỗi thời vào ngày mai nhưng Thế Giới Phẳng dường như không quá cũ. Những vấn nạn toàn cầu hóa gây ra vẫn còn rất nóng, đặc biệt vấn đề Trung Đông, môi trường.

Nói chung là thỏa mãn.

Did you say "FLAT"?

I find Thomas Friedman very engaging and rely on his research and opinion very often when making a point in an argument.

tThe problem with writing about globalization “3.0” is that we are currently in the midst of it. In a matter of years, even months, a book about the future becomes outdated. Unfortunately, that is what I found with The World Is Flat. Even the “Updated and Expanded edition”, published in 2006 or 2007, is no longer up to date. While I strongly appreciate a lot of what Thomas L. Friedman writes about, it is in many ways a blip in history. The internet has progressed to a point beyond even his initial experience with Wikipedia, blogs, and Google.
For example, I finished The World Is Flat and got on my computer. Within five minutes, I visited Facebook, Pinterest, Gmail, then Goodreads. All those websites or services were either in their very beginning, or uncreated, when this book was written. Things have changed, and taken on many interesting and unique roles yet unpictured.
Six years have gone by since this book was published, and already we have moved beyond what he saw. Sure, I look outside and life doesn’t seem to have progressed much since 2006. But in 2006 Facebook hadn’t exploded. The Arab Springs hadn’t happened yet. Microsoft Word 2010 had yet to be released.
I guess my point is, this book was fascinating, but no longer relevant. It shows how we got here, but no longer, I feel, accurately predicts where we are going. Friedman is very optimistic. Honestly, I got bored with the book after a while. When he isn’t ecstatically looking towards the future, he’s warning about the great turmoil about to fall upon the United States if she doesn’t up her math and science scores. That might be the case, but somehow the optimism/Armageddon doesn’t mix well.
I began this book when I decided to become a Rebelutionary. Sadly, it has taken me this long to finish it. And in those years, this wonderful, truly interesting book became outdated. Because while a lot of what he foresaw is happening and continues to happen, history has happened. We’re no longer where we were when this book was written. Even as he refers to his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree as no longer getting it, The World Is Flat no longer gets it. Referring to people like Osama Bin Laden and Steve Jobs were great…when they were alive. But now they are dead. New people have risen up. New social networks have taken hold of politics and government intervention has become a hotly debated topic.
Would I recommend this book? It is not a gut not a gut yes or no at this point. I learned a lot from it, but I also was left feeling bored and dissatisfied. 566 pages is a lot to wade through only to be left with more questions and half-fulfilled premonitions. I say yes for an understanding of how we got where we are. I say no…because I was bored. I recognize a lot of what he is saying. I see it first hand. I experience it first hand. But I have also seen where his starry-eyed enthusasim or grave warnings sugar coat or darken something and make it more confusing.
Two last side comments.
The first is more of a personal critique. He sources Wikipedia. That distracted me a lot. If there is one thing drummed in your head from K-12 it is that Wikipedia is not a reliable source. And he mentions that. He has, in fact, several paragraphs about being cautious with the online encyclopedia. But he is far to enamored with it. Yet another case of things moving forward. If I want an accurate, factual source that I would quote in a book, I’d hit JSTOR. Or ProQuest. Or any maybe even Google Scholar. Not Wikipedia.
Secondly, his view of the future disturbs me. It is very A-type personality oriented. Now, I happen to have that sort of personality. I thrive in the sort of environment he pictures. But not everyone does. If American jobs become entirely specialized and top-oriented, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people. I just hope there is a middle ground that can and will be discovered for more relaxed people who want to have a lifetime job, and who don’t thrive in a constantly changing environment. I guess as the old saying goes, only time will tell.
I’m afraid this review is much more negative than I meant it to sound. It is not that this is a bad book. It is well written and well organized. It is just outdated. Six years is a blip of time compared to eternity, but in a constantly changing and moving society it is eternity. I think it is time for the situation to be re-evaluated, and re-written.

I'll call it the "Book of impressions". As a reporter writes a business book for the geo-political powers governing our era and the one to come, you see more stories than true scientific analysis. It could be good enough for a layman but not for someone looking for deep/real analysis.

Hopefully I will write a full review soon.

Non-Fiction. Friedman explains to us, over and over, how globalization has effectively turned the world into a very very small place -- I was okay with his metaphor of a flat world at first, but over time it started to irritate me. It's neither elegant nor practical. No matter how many virtual conference rooms you have, in a flat world it's still going to take forever to get material goods moved from China to the US, unlike our current round model; later he even starts to talk about how some parts of the world are unflat, ow, my head -- but still, his point remains: digitization, miniaturization, virtualization, and personalization have conspired to make our planet very small indeed, metaphorically speaking. For the most part, Friedman has a highly romanticized view of globalization, looking at it as more of a fascinating academic theory than a real force, and only talking to people who have benefited from the rampant outsourcing and supply-chaining.

The first two thirds of this book suffer from a distinct lack of real world consequence. It's all happy anecdotes and economic theory, which isn't exactly Friedman's strong point. Because of this, it took me about six months to read, was constantly inspiring me to nap, and was just generally twice as long as it needed to be. Friedman makes up a lot of jargon -- going as far as to repurpose common words for his own oblique purposes -- and it can be difficult to remember what he's talking about at any given moment. The other problem is Friedman's scope and focus. When I read non-fiction, I like each chapter to have a thesis. Friedman prefers to wander up and down the page, make the same point several times, dump a lot of irrelevant statistics on me, and then scurry off to deliver a glancing blow to a new perspective, only to doggedly return to his original thrice-made point as if I hadn't gotten it the first two times.

But, if you can make it through all that, cold hard reality shows up in the third act and things finally get interesting. Friedman admits that only .2% of Indians are employed in the technological industry he was so happily touting just a few chapters before. He admits that the world is not entirely flat, and that it may never become fully flat due to poverty, war, or simple fear. He talks about the ramifications of a flat world, the ways it can go wrong, how terrorist networks take advantage of the same readily available work force and supply chain that Dell or Infosys does. He takes the first two thirds of the book and puts it into context. This part I read in just three days. This is the part I can use. Globalization isn't just about Americans losing jobs. It's so much bigger than that. It's about the flow of information, about vulnerability and anger, about global responsibility. Those last hundred and fifty pages were worth struggling through the first three hundred, but only highlight how The World is Flat is more mishmash than structured thesis.

This gets two stars for the first two-thirds of the book and four stars for the last third, giving it an average of three stars.

I feel far more pointy-headed but also far more alarmed about our country’s future after reading this. Friedman does go into a bit too much detail for those who, like me, aren’t exactly techno-geeks, but you definitely learn a lot of interesting factoids, which may make you seem smarter, or more annoying, to anyone you decide to unleash them on in random conversation. Friedman is definitely pro-outsourcing, which may rankle some people, but he lays out a convincing argument on how and why attempts to curb such practices will be ultimately fruitless and could actually hurt the chances for stabilizing democracies worldwide. Regardless of whether you agree with his arguments, you definitely come away from this book thinking: (1) holy crap why didn’t I major in Math or Engineering?; (2) holy crap my kids better major in Math or Engineering; and (3) holy crap if our schools don’t start getting better at teaching Math and Engineering, America is going to need to find itself a nice big Indian sugar-daddy.

I made it through "A History of God" and "Absalom, Absalom!" but I could not make myself finish this book. I gave it six weeks and 350 pages, but in the end I couldn't take any more.

Friedman's writing is at times brilliant: he is a master synthesizer, taking complicated economic, political, technological, and social phenomena and artfully explaining the connections between them all and what that means for the future of our world. I had to give this book three stars because I did learn a great deal. Though I can't speak for the second half of the book, he does an excellent job of telling the stories of Wal-Mart, of outsourcing in India, of China's rise, and so on. Because I work in the administrative side of higher education, I was especially appreciative of his perspective on the growing global competitiveness in education and the American educational failures that are only just beginning to show their effects. He has a real talent for taking all these stories out of their silos and blending them together to paint an exhaustingly comprehensive picture of globalization.

Be warned: Friedman very obviously knows he's a talented writer and decides that gives him license to write a 600 plus page book that could have been 350. He inserts hundreds of personal anecdotes that quickly wore on my patience, especially the dozen or so where he feels the need to remind us repeatedly that his daughter Orly went to Yale (the fact that I remember her name tells you how many times it was mentioned). He also delights in cheesy, italicized repetitions of lines from his many interviews as well as painfully corny metaphors.

I realize I've spent more of this review on process rather than product, but that's what is a real shame about this book. In theory, I think this is a must-read. In practice, I commend anyone who makes it all the way through. The all-important content suffers too much from Friedman's often irritating and always lengthy prose.

I found this book amazing to highlight the globalization effect on the economics, companies and industries. It elaborates well how everyone is being competing with anyone in the world regardless of geographical distance between, which gives a red alarm for countries & companies who don't take the benefits of such competing to be competing in the future :)

A work of monolithic proportion. Carefully researched, addressing some of the most pressing issues of the day, this book should be on the night stand of every aspiring CEO.
The author (three times Pulitzer Prize winner) takes the comparative approach to structure and never fails to keep the readers busy with questions of strategic, technological and political importance. (A quick glimpse of the index is enough to give one a head-spin). For example, consider the `triple convergence' factor for building a successful business (have you ever heard about it?) or how about such notions as `outsourcing', `in-sourcing', `global supply chain'. Executives will reap the benefits from the countless examples of successful decision-making strategies implemented at top companies like UPS, Wal-Mart, JetBlu, and Yahoo. Even if you are not a fan of the business genre, you'll find something beneficial in this work. (take a chance for a change). Fully developed, carefully constructed and extremely interesting, this book should be a required reading for all intellectual readers (especially MBA students, business executives and high-rank political figures).

“Almost all the students who make it to Caltech, one of the best scientific universities in the world, come from public schools. So it can be done. " Yes.

“In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears-and that is our problem.” Very true.