The World is Flat 3.0. | Thomas Friedman

thank you very much this long because I haven't turned it on I talk the talk of globalization and technology I do not walk the walk so Maura thank you very much is that better okay thank you it's a treat to be here in Qatar and be hosted by Georgetown Qatar thank you for having me thank all of you come out today and those in the overflow room what I'm going to do this evening is talk about really my latest thinking about the world is flat and I really want to break this talk into two parts the first part will be for I know some of you read the book those of you haven't I know who you are know who you are where you live where you hang out and so but I want to spend the first half really talking about what does it really mean when he says the world is flat what is that really about a little bit of confusion on that and then in the second part of the talk really share with you what I've learned over the last five years about how one thrives in this flat world what are really the skills you need to have you you and and your kids so every time I try to do this sort of double lecture I reminded of a story of they were digging the tunnel under the English Channel remember to connect Great Britain in Europe they put it out to bid and they got bids of a three billion 3.1 billion pounds 3.2 billion Ponzi l1 bid for a hundred thousand pounds from the firm of Goldberg and Cohen in the East End of London and fiduciary reasons they had to check out this bid so they sent a team out there from the British you know interior ministry and said knocked on the door Cohn answered Goldberg was on the road they said mr. Cohen how can you possibly dig a tunnel from Britain to Europe for a hundred thousand pounds he said what's the problem Cohen will start on one side with a shovel Goldberg will start on the other and we'll dig until we meet what if you don't meet so you'll have two tunnels so you may have two lectures tonight you may have one I I hope that they will meet now the first thing I have to confess is that the world is flat I wish I could tell you I had all this in my mind but I really did it all happened by accident I was the became the New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist in January 1995 and from January 1995 till 2001 I was really focused on globalization issues Lexus issues issues about trade finance and integration after 2001 I really focused a lot on the post 9/11 world and I was really in that mode right up until February of 2004 I started doing documentaries for the Discovery Channel and we did one on the roots of 9/11 we did one on the Palestinian conflict we did another one that we are starting to do on why does everyone not like America and we're actually having that meeting in February of January of 2004 let's do our next documentary on why does everybody hate America and I was thinking how should we do that how should we go about that and I had this crazy idea that what we should do is go to call centers go to call centers all over the world and interview young people who spend their days imitating Americans on what they thought of America I thought it'd make a kind of interesting double mirror well we were we were literally budgeting out where to go the Philippines Bangalore India Costa Rica when it was the middle of the presidential campaign and John Kerry then running against George Bush came out with his blast against what he called Benedict Arnold CEOs CEOs who engage in outsourcing and suddenly this outsourcing issue became a huge controversy in the campaign was on the front page of The Wall Street Journal New York Times Forbes and fortune so I said to the discovery people you know timeout why do we just go to Bangalore India the capital of outsourcing let's do a documentary we'll call it the other side of sourcing and explained to Americans how this works and that's what we did on February 1st 2004 I went with my discovery team to Bangalore and over the next 10 days we shot about 60 hours of interviews with different Indian outsourcing companies and across those 60 hours I got progressively sicker and sicker it was not the Indian food no it was somewhere between the Indian art owner who wanted to write my new software from Bangalore and the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to read my x-rays from Bangalore and the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to trace my lost luggage on Delta Airlines from Bangalore that I realized that while I had been sleeping while I had been off really covering the post 9/11 world something really big had happened in this globalization story and I had missed it and it all came together with the last interview which was with Nandan Nilekani the CEO of Infosys the Indian outsourcing giant non Dunn's an old friend he had been away the first 10 days of the film he just came that day we were sitting on the couch outside his office I had my laptop on my lap and at one point nan Dunn said to me Tom I've got to tell you the global economic playing field is being leveled the global economic playing field is being leveled and you Americans are not ready oh I wrote that down in my little laptop the global economic playing field is being leveled and you Americans are not ready well we went on we did the interview afterwards I got back in my Jeep to go back to my hotel but all the time I was rolling over in my mind what nan Dunn had said the global economic playing field is being leveled and then it just sort of struck me as we bumped along toward my hotel that what he was really saying was the global economic playing field was being flattened and then in the crazy chemical way these things happen it just popped into my head that what Nandan Nilekani India's premier engineer entrepreneur was telling me was it the world is flat and I wrote that down in my notebook the world is flat I got back to the hotel I literally ran up to my room I called my wife back in Bethesda Maryland I said honey I am going to write a book called the world is flat she now says she thought that was a brilliant idea that's not exactly how I recall the conversation but any event I did call my bosses at the New York Times and told them ladies and gentlemen I need to go on leave immediately I need to go and leave immediately because my software the software through which I'm looking at the world and writing my column is out of date I'm a I'm a basic engineer and it's a Java world I need to go on leave immediately if I don't go on leave immediately I am going to write something really stupid in the New York Times it's a great way to get a leave I have to tell you well I didn't get it right away but I did get it four months later I started the book in March April of 2004 I turned it in in December don't try that trick at home kids blew my forearms out along the way but in a sort of fit of energy produce the core thesis of this book when the course thesis of this book is is quite simple of course thesis is if there have been three great era of globalization the first I call globalization 1.0 it lasted from 1492 till the early 1800s the beginning of real global trade and arbitrage that era of globalization 1.0 Shrunk the world from a size large to a size medium and what characterized that first year of globalization was that you went global through your country that is the main agent of globalization was the nation-state nation-states globalizing for Empire or for resources or for power it was Britain colonizing India France you know parts of Africa Spain the Americans globalization 2.0 began in the early 1800s and ended really right around the year 2000 it Shrunk the world from a size medium to a size small and that year of globalization was spearheaded by companies globalizing companies mobilizing for markets and fur labor and for resources in that year of globalization you went global through your company the Dutch East India Company the company was the agent of globalization well while you were sleeping or at least while I was sleeping we entered globalization 3.0 from the year 2000 to the present and hit shrink in the world from a size small to a size tiny and leveling the global economic playing field at the same time and what's really cool really exciting and really terrifying about this year of globalization is that it's not built around countries although they're still important and it's not built around companies although they're still important know what's really new really different really exciting and really terrifying about this era of globalization is that it's built around individuals what is really new about this era is that we now have a world where individuals can compete connect and collaborate globally as individuals so we've gone from a world where globalization was driven by countries to one driven by companies to one now spearheaded by individuals that's what characterizes this era that's what's really to you sometimes people say to me all Friedman you exaggerate we've been through globalization ear as before there was more world trade before World War one this isn't about trade this is about a fact when I was working on my book I called my mother back in Minneapolis she was 80 at the time I got around the phone she said I was disturbing her I said why mom she said I'm playing bridge with someone on the Internet in Siberia please call back later okay was anybody's grandmother here playing bridge on the internet with someone in Siberia in 1913 I don't think so no this era is very very new now excuse me one second what what I'd like to talk about next is how do we get here and that's really about this globalization platform and let me kind of reduce it to its its real core in the book I talk about ten flatteners that really created this world where individuals could be so empowered but for the purposes of this lecture let me just focus on the first four flatteners because they're really the key so the first flattener was the pc the invention of the pc the personal computer why was the pc so important the pc was such a huge flattener because what it allowed was for individuals where it all starts it allowed for individuals for the first time in history to author their own content words music data video spreadsheets to author their own content in digital form now individuals have been offering their own content ever since cave women in cave man etched on cave walls but with the PC with the PC suddenly we as individuals now it's morphing into the iPhone we as individuals can create our own content in digital form in the form of bits and bytes whether it's words photo data music video spreadsheet in the form of digital content in the form of bits and bytes that was the first flattener and you'll understand why it was important when you hear about the second flat second flattener is really a date I consider this date actually next to eleven nine which is the day the Berlin Wall came down next to November 9th 1989 I consider this date the most important day in your life their model on this date was eight nine ninety five August 9th 1995 because on that date August 9th 1995 a little startup company in Mountain View California called Netscape went public and the day Netscape went public changed the world forever for two reasons the first was Netscape's invention what was Netscape's invention it was a device that we call now the browser the browser what did this browser thing do what the browser did was allow people to illustrate on a computer screen everything that had hitherto for been locked away in websites where only computer geeks and computer scientists knew how to extract the data in file form what the netscape browser did was it actually brought the internet to life and made the internet a tool that everyone could use grandpa and grandma grandson and granddaughter with equal ease so the first reason Netscape was important was the Netscape Browser brought the internet to life but the second reason Netscape was important was the Netscape IPO the day Netscape went public August 9 1995 what happened that day well Netscape's investment banker was Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley wanted a price the stock that opening day at $32 Jimmie Barksdale Netscape's founder said no no no no no if this fails god I want it to be remembered as a $20 doc netscape opened that morning at $71 it closed that day at 56 and we all looked at that and we said whoa there is gold over them there hills the Netscape IPO ignited the dot-com boom and the dot-com boom inflated the dot-com bubble and the dot-com bubble got all of us to invest in all kinds of crazy comms well you can't fool me I know they're in your 401 KS okay and when we did we collectively without anybody planning it funded the massive over wiring of the world with fiber optic cable in up space of five years we invested and funded and laid roughly 5 1 trillion dollars excuse me of fiber-optic cable and when we did without anybody having planned it we accidentally connected Doha Dearborn and Dalian remember all those people authoring their digital content on their PCs suddenly thanks to that fiber-optic network that got laid in five years everyone could send their digital content anywhere in the world virtually for free that was the second flattener third flattener was a quiet revolution you didn't have a date you never read much about it this was a revolution in transmission protocols that alphabet soup that you often see referred to HTML HTTP XML soap Ajax you don't need to know what any of them be all you need to know is this some of you are too old to remember this but some of you or remember when you first got email was great your wife got CompuServe and you got AOL and there was just one problem they didn't connect they didn't connect oh sure at the University of Qatar they were so excited when they first got computers in the accounting department they got rid of the abacus or whatever they had down there and in admissions they got rid all those paper files and one got s AP and the other got Microsoft and there was just one problem they didn't connect well what the workflow revolution did that alphabet soup of HTML and HTTP and XML and soap and Ajax what they did was and this was a revolution they created a set of transmission protocols that made everyone's computer and software inter operable so you could actually sit at your computer in Doha communicate with someone in dalian and never have to think for a second what computer my running what computer is she running what software am i running what software is she run they automatically connected and that friends happened over a period of about three years that was a revolution now let's put them all together first I could offer my own content in digital form then I could suddenly thanks to the Netscape revolution send it anywhere in the world for free and then thanks to the workflow revolution I could collaborate with anyone in the world on their digital content no matter where they were farther faster deeper cheaper than ever before all of that came together right around the year 2000 and when it did it created the flattening of the world it created a crude platform for multiple forms of collaboration suddenly more people could collaborate with more other people on more different kinds of content in more different kinds of ways for less money from more places than ever before that's what I mean when I say the world is flat we created a world of collaboration and sometime around the year 2000 you woke up and you turn to your spouse and you said you know what honey I'm able to touch people today I could never touch before and I'm being touched by people today who could never touch me before that's my mom playing bridge on the internet with someone in Siberia and all I did in this book was come along and say you know what you're feeling you're feeling that the world got flat that we created this platform now what the other flatteners are about are they're the new forms of collaboration that came off this platform like outsourcing in sourcing I have a whole informing a whole list of them I'm just going to focus on one the one that is the most revolutionary and that is called up loading up loading term coined by Kevin Kelly founder Wired magazine you see when the world is round you download it when the world is flat you upload upload takes many forms uploading blogging is a form of uploading youtubing you're uploading twittering you're uploading you're not taking content you're creating and globalizing your own content and then there's the mother of all uploading wikipedia the people are writing their own encyclopedia oh I remember when I was growing up I grew up in Minneapolis when I was a kid in the 50s early 60s and the Encyclopedia Britannica salesmen would come to our house he had all those books it come in the living room put him down you know I'd crack him open that was so exciting and then one day we got Microsoft Encarta oh you could download your own encyclopedia and Microsoft Encarta had are you ready 38,000 entries Wow and then Along Came Wikipedia and the people started writing their own encyclopedia they started uploading their own encyclopedia Wikipedia when I checked last had 3 million and 3 million and one ok about 60 every minute the people are uploading their own encyclopedia they put all these flatteners together and what does it mean it means we're going from a world where value content product services were created and invented in vertical silos to a world where value content is being created by who you connect and collaborate with horizontally on this platform we're going from a world of vertical to a world of horizontal and I would argue that that ship a world going from creating value in my own little silo to a world while will create value on this flat world platform by who I connect and collaborate with that shift from vertical to horizontal is the mother of all inflection points and you me we just happen to be here when it happened I believe it is the most fundamental transformation in human interaction since Gutenberg invented the printing press this is really big and in time it will change everything it already is now what do you need to know this is really the second half of my talk about how to survive and maybe thrive on this flat world platform five several rules of business for the flat world first rule is whatever can be done will be done when the world is flat just keep one rule in mind whatever can be done will be done the only question is will it be done by you or two you just don't think it won't be done when the world gets this flat and this many people have this many tools of connectivity and this many tools of individual creativity whatever can be done will be done the only question is will it be done by you or to you if you have a good idea here in Doha promise me you will pursue it immediately because someone in Detroit will have the same idea about a second later and I can give you a lot of examples of this my wife and I were in in Peru three years ago sailing down the river tambopata our Peruvian tour guide was Alfredo Freya's head of Peruvian tourism for Conservation International and Alfredo knew my interest and at one point he said to me Tom you know the really cool thing going on um he's now making and selling Peruvian dish we're on the internet from a village near Cusco cool cool afraid then he added this he's looking into seeing if he can get his dishes made cheaper in China now whatever can be done will be done so he better do it before the Peruvian dish maker in the village next door does it to him I was uh three years ago in Budapest they did a seminar on the world is flat a great honor all these European scholars screaming at me very interesting and um the University of Budapest gave me a car and a driver for the three days I was there a wonderful driver and um I was leaving on a Sunday morning got up very early going to the airport about 7:00 a.m. sitting in the back seat one point my driver says to me he'd been with me for four days mr. Tom mr. Tom if you have any other friends coming to Budapest would you tell them about me I do all kinds of driving service I shouldn't sure haha give me your phone he said no just go to my website I said you have a website and I was in the back of the cab so I said give me your cards I got home I looked up his website it was in Madhya German and English with photographs and music I said to myself you know reminded me of a joke that you say about that Jim Baker used to tell when he was Secretary of State and then he retired and he retired and he said how do you know you're out of power in Washington DC you know you're out of power in Washington DC when your limousine is yellow and your driver speaks Farsi okay so how do you know you're in a flat world where whatever can be done will be done when you're Hungarian cab driver has his own website in magyar German and English with music whatever can be done will be done now it's actually getting even more interesting I got to go to my notes for this one because I had a friend visiting my my oldest friend from from Minneapolis his name's Ken Grier and um Ken had a uh you just find it yet Ken had a UH advertising company in Minneapolis and he got just pounded by the Great Recession had to let go 95% of his staff and he was visiting me and Minneapolis oldest friend I have and we're having dinner and along the way he said I just did a new film for a non-profit even though business bad I like to distill he'll do work for a non-profit I said how could how could you afford to do a film for a non-profit and he told me the story he said the budget was about 20% of what we would normally charge after one face-to-face meeting with the organization the nonprofit all our communication took place over the internet we developed a script and it was approved using a collaborative tool that's provided by w WDS Netcom internally we can look at the script each of us no matter where we were make changes see changed by others and get to a final draft with complete transparency easy convenient and free we did not have a budget to shoot new film but we also had no budget to buy stock film the old way paying royalties of a hundred to two thousand dollars per image so we found a source wwe.com which offered great photos in high quality for as little as $2 we can easily preview all the images place them in our program to make sure they work purchase them online and download the high-resolution versions all in a matter of seconds we had a script that called for four or five different voices rather than hiring local voice talent for 250 to $500 an hour we searched the internet for high quality voices that we could afford amazingly we found several sites offering various forms of narration or voiceovers we selected WWE SS comm in less than one minute we created an account posted our requirements and solicited bids within 5 minutes we had 15 applicants their prices were about 10% of what we had been paying best part said Ken within minutes we had sample reads which we could place in our film and see how the voices fit we selected our finalists wrote them with more specific instructions and within three hours had the final reads delivered us to us by mp3 files over the Internet we could get any accent or ethnicity we wanted then we needed some background and animations we used a site called WTO jungle comm they offer thousands of cuts of music and sound effects each cut could be searched by a keyword and previewed with the click of a mouse and cost pennies whatever can be done will be done and it's getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper now what does this mean well Ken could just you know make cheaper and cheaper films but that's no way to get ahead because someone will make them even cheaper in cheap what it means is in this world where so many things are now commodities think of the things that Ken used to pay for that now have just been turned into commodities on the internet that you've gotta figure what is your chocolate sauce whipped cream cherry on top what is going to be your creative value-add in a world where more and more things are going to be made into commodities and that leads to my second rule of the flat world it goes like this the most important competition when the world is flat is no longer between countries and countries although that's still important the most important competition in the world is no longer between companies and companies although that's still important now when the world is flat the most important competition going forward is between you and your own imagination it's between you and your own imagination because what you imagine now as an individual you can now act on your imagination look at Ken farther faster deeper cheaper than ever before so imagination and creativity matter more now than ever what is your chocolate sauce whipped cream and cherry on top now is a great book about this that I learned a lot from it was written by a guy named Dan pink it's called a whole new mind Dan basically argues the following you know you got your left brain you got your right brain left brain logical analytical mathematical rote learning your accountant uses his left brain a lot and so did you the day you took your SATs that's really the essence of the flat world the most important thing that's happening and that's you know I was always a fan of liberal arts and I'm not saying this because I'm here for Georgetown but I'm an even bigger fan of liberal arts education today because where does right brain thinking come from where does creativity come from it comes from actually having different specialties and mashing them all together think of truly creative people Leonardo da Vinci he was an artist mathematician a scientists and engineer and his creative genius actually came from mashing together these different perspectives that's what liberal arts teaches us it's about bringing together these multiple perspectives if you get a chance go back tonight and Google Steve Jobs graduation speech at Stanford three years ago he tells a wonderful story Steve was a student and undergrad at Reed College in Portland liberal arts school he dropped out like all great American high tech entrepreneurs Michael Dell and Bill Gates he dropped out after one semester but he had nowhere to go so he hung around Reed slept on his old friend's basement floor but because he had nowhere to do and nothing to do with nowhere to go he decided to actually take a course he was interested in it read besides the requirement he took a course in calligraphy and he fell in love with the beauty of type serif and sans serif type calligraphy and typeface and as he says in his graduation speech yet all came out in the first Mac keyboard was all there in the back of his head and the reason the Mac when it came out had so much better collect typography and type and so much richer typeface than Microsoft was because Steve Jobs took a color group of course at Reed College after dropping out you never know where this creative juice is going to come from I was giving the book talk about the world is flat right when the book came out in 2004 in my hometown was that him st. Paul and he happens then during Question Time young man raised his hand in the balcony and I have made a point during the talk to one of the great survival skills in the flat world maybe the most important for a student is the ability to learn how to learn it's the ability to learn how to learn because basically what we know now gets out of date so much faster so it's actually not what you learned but your ability to learn how to learn which is really the ultimate survival skill so it came to question time young man raised his hand in the balcony I called on him he said mr. Friedman I'm in ninth grade and I just have one question one question what course do I take to learn how to learn I thought you know from the mouths of babes what a great question and Stanley on one foot I said to him you know ah here's my gut feeling here's my here's my core advice go around to your friends ask each one of them who's your favorite teacher and take their courses no matter what they're teaching astrophysics mathematics Arabic literature Russian history it doesn't matter the first place you learn how to learn is by loving Hudler and loving to learn and the place some of us are fortunate to be born with it but the place most of it yet most of us get it is from having a great teacher doesn't matter what the subject is that's really where the juice comes from so this issue of creativity going to be enormous ly more important in the flat world and you're going to have to think about what is your chocolate sauce whipped cream or cherry on top because more and more jobs are going to be automated outsourced and digitized now don't think that means that um because you're a bank manager you now have to learn how to a write Shakespeare's Hamlet it doesn't mean that but it does mean that you really have to think more and more what am i adding to this job in the example I like to give is I'm a baseball fan and we live in Washington DC but we share season tickets to the Baltimore Orioles baseball team and there's a guy who sells lemonade at Baltimore Orioles baseball park only he's famous there he doesn't just come up and say lemonade three dollars no he shakes it he does a jig he sits on your lap he stands on his head he sings a song writes you a poem and I notice at the end of every game he's walking around with a wad of dollar bills ten times thicker than any other vendor in the stadium he took a complete commodity job selling lemonade at Baltimore Oriole Stadium and he added his own chocolate sauce whipped cream and cherry and that's what each one of us has to ask what we're doing whatever task it is now the third rule in the flat world is that if it's built around this platform this is related to the second the people are going to thrive most particularly the companies and countries that are going to thrive most are those which learn how to horizontal eyes to use this flat word world platform the best to get out of their silos and two horizontal eyes John Hagel is a well-known management consultant at Deloitte argues were in the middle of what he calls the big shift the big shift we're moving from a world which was built around stocks around stocks of knowledge in your company you had stocks and you hearted them in your company to a world of flows we're moving like I say Ben vertical to horizontal he argues were moving from stocks to flows and the countries the companies and the individuals who will thrive in this world are those that put themselves in the flow Qatar inviting creating a whole University Park that's about putting yourself in the flows as opposed to where this country was safe 50 years ago probably built a lot more around hoarding stocks so you we've got to be in the flow because all of us are smarter than one of us and in the flat world I can now tap all of us I can tap more brainpower and therefore the companies that create the most flows and keep themselves in touch with the most flows and the universities and the communities they are the ones that are going to have to thrive and are going to throw now I had a personal epiphany where I learned this while I was writing the book now this was bare with me this was back in 2004 in the Stone Age um but I was going to visit my daughter my daughter was going to school in New Haven Connecticut and I live she under college there I live in Bethesda Maryland now to get from Bethesda Maryland to New Haven Connecticut is a complete pain in the bye you have to drive to BWI Baltimore Airport about an hour from my home and take Southwest Airlines up to Hartford and then drive an hour from Hartford to New Haven I could almost fly to Doha faster okay cut to our air never mind I like Southwest Airlines don't you don't look like a Southwest crowd but I don't know how many of you have flown on Southwest Airlines but Southwest Airlines is el cheapo airline in America and you don't actually get a ticket on Southwest you get it just get a thing that says a B or C you don't get a seat I made a seat assignment you just get a ticket that says a B or C aids board first B's board second C's board last it's just one thing you need to know when you fly on Southwest Airlines you do not want to be a seat okay especially if you're carrying a suitcase of clothes for your daughter when to closing you want to have room above the seat when you get on the plane no problem I'm a hip got had my secretary call up and order a ticket Southwest Airlines and just sure been a I got to Baltimore Airport 95 minutes before my flight so I was going to be a name I took out my Visa card stuck it in the Southwest he taken machine and out came my ticket and it said B I said son but this thing is fixed this is rigged this is worse than Las Vegas I'm here ninety five minutes before this flight there is no wait imma be who I was mad when got my Cinnabon and sat in the back of the beeline stewing well 45 minutes went by and they called the flight all the A's got on and then I saw they noticed most of these people were carrying just crumpled pieces of white home printer paper as if they had gone online at 12:01 a.m. the night before and downloaded and printed out their own barcodes and boarding passes I looked at that friends I said Friedman you are so 20th century you are so globalization 2.0 of course what I didn't realize is what Southwest Airlines knew and most of the people on that flight was that the world was flat and in the flat world they could empower their customers to become their own ticket agents I remember the old days you know used to go down at K Street Washington DC line up wait in line to get to the front of the ticket line you know at the United Airlines counter there I'm going to Baltimore menu no wait you pull your number get your ticket go back to then then then we got the e-ticket machine we thought that was cool and then Southwest Airlines said no we'll take this one step further we will make you your own ticket agent and by the way if you value your own time staying up at 12:01 a.m. the night before you don't do that anymore now it's two weeks at a time you are now actually paying Southwest Airlines to be your own ticket agent have a nice day that's what happens with the world flat world is we all have to learn how to horizontal eyes and take advantage of this platform and the companies countries universities communities and individuals who horizontal eyes the best the most are in touch with the most flows I would argue will be the most productive we're going to see a burst of productivity we already are thanks to this platform think about me next time I did stay up till 12:01 a.m. the night before I did download my barcode and boarding pass I got to BWI Airport gate only 35 minutes before my flight and what did I do I captured 60 minutes of productivity for moi I got 60 minutes of productivity by learning to interface with Southwest Airlines horizontally rather than that's why horizontal ization is so important now let me finish with the forest and forth this is the newest for me implication of the flat bowl and I got it from a book by a guy named of Seidman who runs a ethics consulting firm in America the book is called how and if you haven't read it I would urge you to read it it's a very important book and what he argues basically is the following what happens when the world gets flat is we can now see into each other and others can see into us farther faster deeper and cheaper than ever before but they cannot only see into us they can if they want tell the whole world about us without any editor any filter or any libel or I'm having a real nice time here at the Four Seasons Doha but if I wasn't I could just go on Travelocity com post a one-star rating for the Four Seasons in Doha a lot of people might read that because I could hear the people in the room next door maybe I had a bad night I can now see into you and you can now see into me farther faster deeper cheaper than ever before but more importantly we can all tell the world about each other without any filter any editor or yikes any libel look now why is that basically because in a world where anyone who has a cell phone has a camera and therefore is a paparazzi in a world where anyone who has a blog is a columnist in a world where anyone who has YouTube is now a filmmaker and in a world where anyone who has Twitter I know honor you're out there twittering is now a reporter well in a world where everyone is a potential paparazzi columnist reporter and filmmaker everyone else is a public figure welcome to my world yeah therefore you are leaving you and your kids digital footprints everywhere you go or people are creating digital footprints about you everywhere you go that will be infinitely searchable oh yeah in the old days if you had a bad experience maybe in business here in Doha you just moved down the coast maybe to Dubai and you'd leave your reputation behind oh not anymore not with Google not with Facebook your reputation now follows you everywhere you go you are leaving digital footprints in the sand that never get washed away therefore how becomes more important than ever how you live your life how you conduct yourself in public how you say you're sorry how you don't say you're sorry as an individual a government a company or a business how matters more than ever in a world where nothing stays hidden here's some free advice have nothing to hide as Mark Twain said always tell the truth that way you'll never have to remember what you said and believe me if you write a column you really have to be careful because people can google what you said in 1998 in one second but we and most importantly our kids have to know and they have to be reminded we're living in a world where the house matter more than ever because you're on candid camera I actually really realize this I was in Boston and it sort of hit me the full force of it I was actually teaching a course with Larry Summers at Harvard as the whole controversy around him was erupting and I was at Logan Airport going home in from Boston at the end of the day and very tired went to buy some magazines off the magazine show took them down walked over to the counter to pay for them and a woman was coming from another direction honestly I thought I got there first I put my magazines down she said excuse me I was here first and she looked at me I know who you are or if that happened today say ma'am could I buy your magazines kind of shine your shoes can I buy you lunch just don't blog or tweet on me please we are living in a world where the house matter more than ever now let me simply conclude by by saying this a lot of you have been following my my commentary lately may have noticed that I'm really focused a lot around America right now I haven't really read about in the Middle East much at all really focused on my country very worried that what's going on in America with its governance and the challenge from China and really trying to focus on and think about how my country gets its groove back but I still you know a lot of people say Britain on the nineteenth-century America in the 20th century and China will own the 21st century that maybe that maybe we're not going to win the twentieth first century we have by default that's that's for sure but I when I think about this flat world and I think about flows I think about creativity and I think about openness and I think about which societies can engender that most what leaves me still hopeful about America's still think we got a lot of that we got get it focused we got to have much better governance but I'm not ready to see the 21st century yet you'll pardon me to anyone in fact Mike my grandmother in Minnesota grandma Friedman got god bless her grandma Friedman used to sit in her rocking chair in the cold Minnesota winter and she would say to me Tommy never seed a century to a country that censors Google it was it was just a little thing grandma Friedman used to say thank you very much

Channel: Center for International and Regional Studies

Views: 99,072

Rating: 4.2655973 out of 5

Keywords: thomas friedman, foreign affairs, the new york times, cirs, the world is flat, doha, qatar, Georgetown Qatar, globalization, middle east, hot flat and crowded, iraq war, environmental issues, GUQatar, Georgetown University in Qatar, foreign policy

Id: MoHiMaZek3U

Length: 54min 57sec (3297 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2012