Tom Friedman's 2006 best seller, TheWorld is Flat, a modified and updated version of an earlier edition of the same title, is essentially a rehash of his arguments in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, with the exception that now he is better informed and more verbose about the power of the Internet in flattening the world and taking it farther away from family and community concerns and closer to the concerns of success and achievement in the cyberspace. Actually, the title of The World is Flat is quite deceptive. For the first 450 pages the impression is created that the world, most if not all of it, has really flattened out, that the playing field has truly leveled off. But on page 458, I encountered a shocking revelation, that a large part of the world is actually unflat. In between the flat and the unflat worlds, another world pops up - the half-flat world. By this time, I did not know what to believe. It seems a better title for this book would be "The Flat, Unflat, and Half-Flat Worlds," more or less like the Three Worlds of Development of fifty years ago - the first, the second, and the unfortunate third world. World ‘trilogies' of this nature are not uncommon. The World Systems Theory (WST), for example, posits it as the core, the semi-periphery, and the periphery. This one, however, cannot be compared with the Friedman formulation, for the WST suggests that the core lives off the periphery in that its own development and survival is concomitant with the underdevelopment of the periphery - true to a great extent if you look at the role of sweat shops in keeping the multinational corporations going.
The flat world argument rests on the assumption of ten flatteners and a "triple convergence." Mr. Friedman says the flat world makes it possible for billions of people in the middle classes to communicate and cooperate with each other and thus participate in a global social and economic transformation powered by the engine of new information technology (IT). The reason for the unflat world is that the people there have no hope of reaching the middle class because "either they are too sick, or their local governments are too broken for them to believe they have a pathway forward." Is that it? Is that enough reason for poverty of the people who don't even have safe drinking water let alone computers? Mr. Friedman recognizes the existence of global poverty but fails to explain its structural and geopolitical causes like the ones suggested by the WST. This is one of the main weaknesses in the flat world logic.
And what about the economic and digital divide that exists in the flat world USA? This question is in line with one of the three questions allowed at the end of his recent lecture at a major historically black university, North Carolina Agriculture and Technology University in Greensboro. His answer was flimsy and incomplete, more or less to the effect: You belong to the category of half-flats. You have the chance and the motivation to jump in, but lack the necessary means to do so. Try and acquire the means, then jump in. Is it not the same sermon given to the downtrodden through the centuries?
Of course the power of new information technology to bring the world closer and make it more interconnected and interdependent is unquestionable. But technological progress by itself has never helped flatten or level the playing field. The history of technology reveals that unless otherwise managed through public policy, technological innovations tend to accentuate inequalities by being inaccessible to the under-privileged, at least in the initial stages. That is what seems to be happening with new IT in the age of globalization, so uncritically glamorized by Mr. Friedman. I quote from the UNDP's Human Development Report 2005:
Five years ago, at the start of the new millennium, the world's governments united to make a remarkable promise to the victims of global poverty……a solemn pledge to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty."
While recognizing some major improvements worldwide in light of this pledge, the report warns:
The overall report card for progress makes for depressing reading. Most countries are off track for most of the MDGs (millennium development goals)……and already deep inequalities are widening.
The report goes on to substantiate the above claims by numerous facts and examples. It is obvious that Mr. Friedman has failed to take into account the structural disjunction between what may be technologically available but socially and culturally inaccessible to the masses of people everywhere. This reminds me of sociologist Robert Merton's famous explanation of social deviance in America as a consequence of what he called "disjunction between culturally desirable goals and socially available means to achieve them." Following this line of argument, fanaticism and terrorism as deviant behaviors would result from alienation of many from the newly available technology and its rewards rather than their irrational refusal to plug into digitalized globalization because of their utopian vision of establishing the kingdom of Islam on earth, as Tom Friedman implies. He calls these disgruntled Muslim extremists Islamo-Leninists and their ideology, Islamo-Leninism. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Fundamentalist Muslims embracing the godless ideology of Communism-Leninism? The concepts are fundamentally different. Just look around beyond Osama bin-Laden and the privileged band with Mohammed Atta who blew up the Twin Towers. Leave aside the bunch of ideologues in the mosques and madersas of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The cadres of Muslim extremists around the world consist of less educated, unemployed or under-employed, the young and the poor whose opiate is religion, the ‘other-world' their hope, and owning a gun perhaps the only source of power and pride, not a "grand vision of establishing the kingdom of Islam here on earth." I bet they would not even know what you mean.
Friedman uncritically promotes the role of ten flatteners and the triple convergence in flattening the world. I take on only two of these flatteners, outsourcing and supply-chaining, and the third convergence as examples of unsubstantiated ‘truths' the book is full of. Outsourcing may be the wave of the future in the fast developing global economy. It may indeed be good for the multinational corporations, and perhaps the only way for them to stay competitive and survive. But tell this to the textile and furniture workers on the fringes of techno-economic globalization in the states of North Carolina and Virginia. The flat world is after all not so flat for them and their families. Neither would it be so in the near future for millions now employed in the service sectors if their jobs continue to be outsourced to Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon. I am not sure how much web-surfing and uploading would help them to live with dignity in the richest country in the world, unless new skills and opportunities are rapidly created. The world may be flat or flatter today than ever before for the outsourced but not for the outsourcing communities. What is good for the goose may not be good for the gander.
Friedman sings praises of supply-chaining and its biggest and the most efficient user, Wal-Mart. He does not discuss what it is doing to local stores and smaller American manufacturers like Thomson Consumer Electronics and the town of Circleville, Ohio where the plant was located before being wiped off by Wal-Mart supply-chaining (see the Frontline documentary Is Wal-Mart Good for America?); or how Wal-Mart denies basic benefits to its workforce while making huge profits for its owners, top managers, and shareholders. I do realize that there is another side to the Wal-Mart story. Buying cheap stuff is good for the average American consumer by saving him/her billions of dollars annually.
The third convergence: And lo and behold, it all comes together when "three billion people who had been locked out of the field suddenly found themselves liberated to plug and play with everybody else." Oh, really? Later on in the book, Mr. Friedman contradicts himself as quickly and grandly as he first proposes the liberation of the three billion Chinese, Indians, and the post-Soviet society citizens. It is now well-known, for example, that an average Chinese person is in many ways worse off today than he/she was twenty-five years ago when there was universal health care, education, and housing, and there was little or no disparity or environmental destruction caused by relentless growth in the most unabashed capitalist communist country. Even those living in the flat part of China have their Internet intercepted regularly for politically incorrect news and views. Much of China remains both politically and economically unliberated to "plug and play with everybody else." Bill Gates, as quoted by Friedman himself, agrees. But unlike Friedman, I have no business telling the Chinese government how to fix this problem. China as a country and its bureaucratic and economic elites are indeed thriving in a flattened world, looking forward to overtaking Japan in the near future as the world's second or third largest economy.
Another example given by Mr. Friedman of the beauty of convergence is how Southwest Airlines let all the ten flatteners come together to let you issue your own boarding pass online 24 hours before the flight next day. I recently flew Southwest from Raleigh-Durham International to Phoenix, AZ. It was an unmitigated chaos, in my judgment. Nobody had a seat assigned, not even those who might have stayed up late to have an A line boarding pass that would let them board a few minutes before the unlucky Bs and Cs. There was competition and tension within each line to somehow get ahead of the other guy to get the best or better of the leftover fare (seats). This crude example of a flattened world is a clear demonstration of declining quality of service a customer receives these days for anything he/she buys. It may be good for Southwest but I am not sure if it is such a good idea for the passenger to save a few bucks while surrendering the old-fashioned security and courtesy of knowing where he/she was going to sit.
In addition to sickness, disempowerment, frustration, lack of imagination, bad governments, Islamo-Leninism, etc. war is suggested as the greatest anti-flattener. "McDonaldization," in this context meaning as many McDonalds around the world as possible, was suggested in The Lexus and the Olive Tree as one of the good ways to get rid of war. This option for world peace is repeated in The World is Flat along with a more effective option, the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, which in essence means "the advent and spread of just-in-time global supply chains in the flat word." I do not dispute that being hooked on to hamburgers, computers, and doing business globally may indeed be some distraction from war and violence. However, the fact is that none of the wars of past fifty years had anything to do with not having enough of McDonalds, Dell computers, or global supply-chaining. Three of the most vicious wars of this period were waged for right or wrong reasons by the flattest of all countries, the United States of America, with the largest number of McDonalds and the longest supply chains. I challenge Mr. Friedman to give me one example where "McDonaldization" or the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention had anything to do with war or peace. But calling other countries rogue nations and axis of evil may have something to do with them.
This brings me to my last point of contention with "The World is Flat" argument. While the flat or flatter world has done well in some ways for many industries, communities, and peoples around the world, it brings environmental calamity in its wake. The traffic congestion and air pollution in Beijing, Bangalore, and Bangkok are testimony to this calamity that must be duly recognized and addressed, lest we are all suffocated by the false consciousness of a flat world. What is the answer to "too many Toyotas," may I ask, Mr. Friedman? Alternative energy sources, different means of transportation, greener industries, changing lifestyles, Kyoto protocols - right? Of course, but what is the flat world with all its knowledge, resources, and ‘wisdom' doing about it? Precious little, actually.
This brief commentary convinces me that The World is Flat is faulty history, poor journalism and, a bad sermon that sends a wrong message for peace, prosperity, morality, and sanity in an insane world.
* A critique of Tom Friedman's The World is Flat.
** The author is a faculty member in the School of Management at Walden University, Minneapolis, MN. The opinions expressed in this critique are solely that of the author.
Copyright remains exclusively with the author.