Word: friedman
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...Friedman continues the informal mode of popular scholarship that earned him acclaim. Exclamation marks are everywhere, and Friedman coins several clever and useful monikers. “Developing Countries Anonymous,” for instance, expresses the need for underdeveloped countries to engage in self-reflection, openly avow their lack of development, and then consciously choose to fix it. He also intersperses personal accounts of minor technological enlightenment—realizing that he can print his boarding pass at home, for instance—that provide a welcome air of self-deprecation to countervail the author’s reverence...
...Friedman and the mayor, it seems, both ensnare themselves in exceedingly sunny optimism by limiting their focus one-dimensionally to economics. Though many theorists recognize globalization as at least partially a political and cultural phenomenon, Friedman devotes the vast majority of “The World Is Flat” to business, corporate management, and technological innovation...
...doing so, he departs somewhat from his past work on the subject and from his geopolitical expertise. Friedman may be best known on campus for his role as a guest lecturer this semester in Social Analysis 78, “Globalization and Its Critics,” co-taught by University President Lawrence H. Summers and Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel (who is—incidentally—Friedman’s college friend from their years as undergrads at Brandeis). In the wider world, Friedman is a high-profile New York Times columnist and a trained scholar...
...popular style sometimes goes too far, however. Friedman tends to externalize his internal monologue as he travels the non-Western world. His thoughts unfortunately include aw-shucks American bemusement with those Asians and their technology: Wow, bullet trains have wireless, but I can’t get good cell phone service in Bethesda...
...leveling the playing field. Most of these are business practices defined in the peculiar language of management consultants—outsourcing, insourcing, open-sourcing, supply-chaining—but the list also includes the fall of the Berlin Wall and Netscape’s initial public offering, which Friedman may credit too effusively for initiating the 1990s tech economy. Though these factors seem somewhat arbitrarily chosen, their explications are enlightening. For instance, Friedman explains UPS’s fascinating role, referenced knowingly but indecipherably in the company’s television commercials, in “synchronizing global supply chains...