The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.

By Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 496 pp., $27.50.

GOOD SOCIAL analysis, like good theology, should pro-vide at least two things for readers. First, it should provide an interpretive framework to help readers locate themselves in the contemporary world, to help them make sense out of what is happening. Second, it should provide some leverage for critiquing that world, for making judgments about what we should do. Thomas Friedman has done a useful if partial job on the first task, and he is suggestive if ultimately less successful on the second. Even where I found shortcomings, his analysis is productively provocative. And Friedman is able to present the essence of some fairly complex issues in a highly readable form for a nontechnical audience interested in the issue of globalization.

The major thesis of the book is that a series of economic and technological factors (he identifies ten) have combined since about 2000 with enhanced personal and organizational capacity and the arrival of a huge number of new players on the world economic stage to produce a force that is already beginning to affect us like a tidal wave, and whose full impact will hit in the next decade or so. He thinks many of us are unprepared for this wave, and this book is his wake-up call. Though most would see a tidal wave as primarily a negative force, Friedman believes that the impending changes have potential for producing positive results as well as stresses. The title of the book comes from an image of a world in which old hierarchies and power arrangements have been swept aside and the playing field has been leveled in ways that enable many more people to benefit from advances in productivity.

One example that illustrates the flavor and range of Friedman's analysis is his argument about the impact of the so-called dot-com bubble and subsequent bust. He contends, contrary to common assumptions, that although the bust was bad for some investors, it turned out to be beneficial in opening up world markets. The overcapacity which produced the bust also produced bargain-basement prices for telecommunication, thereby enabling players from previously marginal regions, especially China and India, to get in the game.

In his characteristic storytelling style, Friedman relates multiple examples of firms in these regions that have emerged to provide technology services to American business. One example, involving an Indian firm that does basic tax-return work for an American accounting company, reflects his view that although cost advantages (especially in the area of wages) are part of the dynamic involved, of real significance are the competitive capacities and associated innovation made possible by the new technology, which can be applied in many areas other than low-skilled manufacturing operations.

A clear extension of this line of analysis, and one of the most important insights of the book, is that Americans need to get accustomed to the fact that we will not long remain "the big dog on the block." From my point of view, we have badly needed a good dose of humility, and the global shifts Friedman identifies promise to move us in that direction. (Perhaps a task for this generation of American theologians should be to develop a robust theology of humility.)

Friedman himself seems ambivalent about the implications of the change. While many passages point toward the emergence of a system of global cooperation where no one is dominant, many others assume a win-lose scenario, in which Americans will be dominated by the Indians and Chinese if we don't get our act together. He starts one of his chapters with a brief recounting of what happened to America's previous world dominance in basketball, describing it as a great metaphor for what is happening in the global economy. Bather than celebrating the emergence of parity, he seems to long for a restoration of the glory days when the United States was number one.

The sports analogy constrains his thinking in other ways. He writes too often as if the only choice we all have is to play and win at the highest level or to be losers for life. This inclination is especially apparent in his frequent references to the relentlessness of high-stakes competition. There is no time to rest; we have to work harder; the Europeans are delinquent because they value having more holidays; Friedman's daughter will not inherit the carefree world he knew growing up. I kept wondering what he would say to Gar Alperovitz, who suggests in a recent book that in order to increase citizen participation we need to resume the trend toward shorter work weeks. Friedman writes as though this is not an option, as though the only game in town is the NBA. I suspect that this is in part a reflection of the fact that almost all of his sources are supercompetitive business leaders, for whom anything but the NBA is unacceptable. But there are choices, or there ought to be. If the current system undercuts many of those choices, perhaps we should modify the system.