The World Is Flat

I cannot tell any other society or culture what to say to its own children, but I can tell you what I say to my own: The world is being flattened. I didn't start it and you can't stop it, except at a great cost to human development and your own future. But we can manage it, for better or for worse. If it is to be for better, not for worse, then you and your generation must not live in fear of either the terrorists or of tomorrow, of either al-Qaeda or of Infosys. You can flourish in this flat world, but it does take the right imagination and the right motivation. While your lives have been powerfully shaped by 9/11, the world needs you to be forever the generation of 11/9-the generation of strategic optimists, the generation with more dreams than memories, the generation that wakes up each morning and not only imagines that things can be better but also acts on that imagination every day.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In 1999 I published a book on globalization called The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The phenomenon we call globalization was just taking off then, and The Lexus and the Olive Tree was one of the early attempts to put a frame around it. This book is not meant to replace The Lexus and the Olive Tree, but rather to build on it and push the arguments forward as the world has evolved.

I am deeply grateful to the publisher of The New York Times and chairman of the New York Times Company, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., for granting me a leave of absence to be able to undertake this book, and to Gail Collins, editorial page editor of The New York Times, for supporting that leave and this whole project. It is a privilege to work for such a great newspaper. It was Arthur and Gail who pushed me to try my hand at documentaries for the Discovery Times Channel, which took me to India and stimulated this whole book. Thanks in that regard also go to Billy Campbell of the Discovery Channel for his enthusiastic backing of that Indian documentary, and to Ken Levis, Ann Deny, and Stephen Reverand for helping to bring it off. Without Discovery the show would not have happened.

I never could have written this book, though, without some wonderful tutors from the worlds of technology, business, and politics. A few individuals must be singled out for particular thanks. I never would have broken the code of the flat world without the help of Nandan Nilekani, CEO of the Indian technology company Infosys, who was the first to point out to me how the playing field was being leveled. Vivek Paul, president of the Indian technology company Wipro, really took me inside the business of the flat world and deciphered it all for me-time and time again. Joel Cawley, the head of IBM's strategic planning team, helped me connect so many of the dots between technology and business and politics on Planet Flat-connections I never would have made without him. Craig Mundie, chief technology officer of Microsoft, walked me through the technological evolutions that made the flat world possible and helped ensure that in writing about them I would not fall flat on my face. He was a tireless and demanding tutor. Paul Romer, the Stanford University economist who has done so much good work on the new economy, took the time to read the book in draft and brought both his humanity and his intellect to several chapters. Marc Andreessen, one of the cofounders of Netscape; Michael Dell of Dell Inc.; Sir John Rose, chairman of Rolls-Royce; and Bill Gates of Microsoft were very generous in commenting on certain sections. My inventor friend Dan Simpkins was enormously helpful in walking this novice through his complex universe. Michael Sandel's always challenging questions stimulated me to write a whole chapter-“The Great Sorting Out.” And Yaron Ezrahi, for the fourth book in a row, let me bounce countless ideas off his razor-sharp mind. The same was true for David Rothkopf. None of them is responsible for any mistakes, only for insights. I am truly in their debt.