The World Is Flat Study Guide

Friedman calls for a reality check as we explore the manner in which countries and societies will cope with and adapt to the dramatic changes that globalization brings to the way we do business, as individuals and entities. His comparison of the Industrial Revolution to the current IT Revolution leads us to believe that the world flattening we see today could have been predicted by Karl Marx.

An interview with Harvard’s noted political theorist Michael J. Sandel discusses whether or not exploitation is globalization; are the outsourced people from India being exploited or given opportunity they would not otherwise have had? In search of an answer to this question, Friedman examines the India-Indiana story from2003, where an Indian company was outsourced to upgrade Indiana’s unemployment computer system, effectively taking work from people in Indiana in order to provide more work for people in India. We examine the blurring boundaries between companies and different groups of workers, as well as the relationships between communities and the businesses that operate within them. Friedman demonstrates that as little people begin to act big, so too are big people able to connect on the smallest level. Identities become harder to define, which will also need to be sorted out. The traditional roles ofconsumer, employee, citizen, taxpayer and shareholder have all become blurred and intertwined.

Friedman summarizes the chapter with an examination of intellectual property law and means that must be put in place to protect it, as well as the death of the human bond in the online world.