Full Version: A must read book------------------The World Is Flat

A must read book------------------The World Is Flat

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is a best-selling book by Thomas L. Friedman analyzing the progress of globalization with an emphasis on the early 21st century. It was first released in 2005 and was later released as an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006.

Friedman believes the world is flat in the sense that the competitive playing fields between industrial and emerging market countries are leveling. Friedman recounts many examples in which companies in India and China are becoming part of large global complex supply chains that extend across oceans through a process called outsourcing, providing everything from service representatives and X-ray interpretation to component manufacturing. He recalls seeing such major American companies as Dell, AOL, and Microsoft using Eastern teleoperators who are paid much less than their counterparts in the West. He describes how these changes were made possible through intersecting technologies, particularly the Internet, fiber-optics, and the PC.

Have you really read the book? I heard about it and attended a geography seminar recently and they mentioned about the book. I haven't really looked for it but I think the world is flat for developed countries. They can outsource their financial process such as closing their accounts transaction in another country. While Americans are sleeping they have people in India doing the closing for them so there is no time barrier. World is flat. But for less developed countries where they have a little or even none, things or resources to help them get out of poverty. I think the world is still round for them.

Mignon, good observation. lol. Wonderful.

i have spent nearly ten days reading this book when i was in pakistan. i think although u can point some flaws of its imperfections and non-aticulate description, on the whole, this book tells us a full-viewed landscape of the 21 century and most important, some fashions everybody can fell at the begining of this centure. and what's more, the author tells us also ways to solve if u or ur region or your country see the fashions the problems to ur survive. so i think it is a wonderful book.