The World Is Flat

Friedman argues that a set of developments converging around 2000 levelled the global economic playing field, allowing individuals and small companies anywhere to compete and collaborate globally. He identifies ten flatteners including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Netscape public offering and the resulting internet build-out, workflow software that allowed systems to interoperate, open source, outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining as practised by Walmart, insourcing as practised by UPS, search, and mobile and wireless technologies.

His reporting from India and China is the book's evidence base, and it was genuinely new to most Western readers in 2005. He describes call centres, radiology work sent to India overnight, tax returns prepared offshore, and the specific capabilities that made this possible.

He argues that the response for developed economies is education and adaptability rather than protection, and that individuals should become what he calls untouchables, meaning workers whose jobs cannot be outsourced, automated or commoditised.

The book has been heavily criticised. The flat metaphor is contradicted by the persistent concentration of high-value activity in a small number of places, which Richard Florida and Pankaj Ghemawat both documented. Ghemawat's data shows that most economic activity remains national or regional rather than global. Friedman writes through anecdotes from senior executives who had interests in the narrative. The book is long and repetitive, and the technological determinism gives little weight to policy, institutions or labour. The reporting from 2005 is a useful record of what that moment looked like and the analysis has aged poorly.