April 20, 2005
Flattened
Finally finished Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat.” Way too long—why do so many books lack ruthless editors?—and overstuffed with cut ’n’ pasted notes and interviews. But his core argument holds: globalization is here to stay, and the U.S had better get its act together. Or end up with a competitive advantage in pizza delivery and not much else.
What struck me as I read Friedman’s book was how much of his flattened world is a consequence of, well, dumb luck.
Luck that all those bubble-era businesses spent squillions laying fiber and then went bust, forever changing the economics of global broadband communications.
Luck that the magic of Moore’s Law—which states that computing power doubles every couple of years—hasn’t run out of steam (despite dire predictions to the contrary).
Luck that all this coincided with the rise of (nearly) free software, which enabled developing-country entrepreneurs to get up and running on the cheap.
And most of all, luck that the U.S., where all this originated, just didn’t see what was about to hit it.
So maybe not so so lucky for us.
Posted by Stephen at 11:58 PM in Economics | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.disinterestedparty.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/51
