reflections

Traveling a Flat world with Friedman and Fukuyama

I am only half way through Tom Friedman's The World is Flat and already it is evident that his descriptions are well observed and that his analysis is less than adequate. But focused observations are what we would expect from a highly trained journalist.

Friedman's premise is that we are now in the process of absorbing Globalization 3.0. In his previous paeon to globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman made the case the Globalization was a fact, the train had left the station on a single track forward and that countries had better get on board or be left behind. This time, he takes it one step further. While the rest of the world slept, or was distracted by 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, the dot com bust and (he missed these...Michael Jackson and Terry Schaivo) the fundamental basis for economic success had changed.

In Friedman's Flat World, anyone, anywhere can compete to provide economic value at any place in the value chain. It is the ultimate positive picture of globalization. It absolutely requires the technological changes symbolized by Windows, Netscape, Google, workflow software, open source, supply chain management, outsourcing, excess fiberoptic capacity and their convergence at key locations and in key industries.

Friedman's analysis applies all of this to everything. He pays most attention to those industries that are highly dependent on intellectual process, on knowledge work, products and services that flow easily across fiber. What difference does it make that Boeing is using Russian Aerospace Engineers from Ilyushin to design the next 7X7? It is better value and lower cost for Boeing.

What I find missing from this Flat World is a sense that there are things which move easily on fiber and things that do not. Ideas, designs, control moves easily. Hard products do not. Culture moves much more easily than does product.

What Friedman, and Fukuyama does not, misses is the impact that globalization is having on culture. While Friedman makes the case that the World is Flat for Al Qaeda as well as for Walmart, he ignores the fact that it is the wholesale export of Western Culture, action movies, gangsta rap music, Britney Spears bare midriffs, etc. that enflames Islamic fundamentalism as much as American support for Israel.

I have not read enough of Fukuyama (not even his controversial 1992 book, "The End of History and the Last Man"). However, listening to him this week in a Charlie Rose interview, he definitely "gets" the cultural impact of what we are doing, especially in Asia and the Middle East.

Back to Friedman's world. He is finding that the young people of India and China are just a bit "hungrier" for the good life than their American counterparts. They are willing to work harder. More of them are going into the scientific and engineering professions that our young seem to avoid. The mayor of Dalian, China, sees their future in the 200K + students atteding their 22 mostly technical universities, all studying either Japanese or English. He is not worried about the future, because he sees it right in front of him.

But maybe, while Friedman has been singing the praise of this technological flattening of the world, he has taken his eye off the ball and it has changed again, while he was asleep. More thoughts tomorrow on what the Peak Oil will do to Walmart's supply chain.