Agylen

I might be treading on dangerous waters by reviewing Tom Friedman’s latest book “The World is Flat” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0374292884) instead of the usual computer books. I am no economy or geopolitics expert, so I might be flamed for writing something really stupid, but after all this is my blog, so I’m allowed to say anything i like, right?

First of all, I liked the book. Not as much as “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”, which I found more varied and lively, but still I think it’s a very interesting and stimulating book.

I also do not agree with some of the critics, who pointed out that the world is still round and that there are many inequalities yet. To say so is to overlook the fact that Friedman himself admits (p.375: “Indeed, this is the point in the book where I have to make a confession: I know that the world is not flat.”) the same.

The one point where, in my opinion, Friedman downplays the risks to the flattening of the world that are brought by globalization itself, is when he talks about the impending energy crisis caused by the growing of China’s, India’s and Russia’s economy (”Too Many Toyotas”). He dedicates too little space to this problem and it is obvious that he has no real solutions to propose. But on the other hand, who has them?

As a geek and Open Source advocate, I obviously appreciate the importance given to Open Source as one of the “ten flatteners”. I would just like to object to the statement that “In 1991 […] Linus Torvalds […] posted his Linux operating system to compete with the Microsoft Windows operating system.” In 1991, Windows was at version 3.0: not much more than a graphical shell on top of MS-DOS and nowhere near complete dominance of the desktop market. We all know that Linus wrote Linux because he wanted a free Unix-like operating system to play with and Tanenbaum did not want too release Minix for free. I don’t think the existence of Windows played any role in this.

Apart from these minor critiques, I recommend “The World is Flat” to anyone wishing to understand where this world is going. You might not agree with everything that Friedman says here, but it will surely give you much food for thought.