The World is Flat

The first two-fifths of this book are a waste of time for anybody keeping up on the development of the internets, but the insights in and recommendations of the rest of the book are awesome. With a good chunk of self-gut-check for the Americans, another good chunk of pats on the back to the hard-working parts of the world that have taken advantage of the power of collaboration now possible, and a good helping of constructive criticism for everybody, Friedman is able to paint and accurate picture of the potential of the world to become either a lot cooler or very bad. It was a long book, but I would be afraid the abridged versions would throw the insight out with the examples-water. My favorite insight was the potential realignment of the political parties with respect to socio-economic class. The conservative party may find that special interest might decided to back more progressive parties as it would benefit their bottom line while the unions may find themselves looking for protection in the conservative camps. All this because of the internets, amazing. In general, I enjoyed reading it from a journalist's perspective. He seems to not have an agenda because all this internet stuff is new and exciting to him. Since he's a famous journalist, he seems to have gotten interviews with a lot of leaders in the field, too. A note to the reader of the book, nice job with the slight accents, but please learn how to prounounce the proper names.

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