I haven’t read Thomas Friedman’s new book, The World is Flat. However, if these are actual lines from the book, I may need to, just for the experience:
As I left the Infosys campus that evening along the road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: “The playing field is being leveled.”
What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened… Flattened? Flattened? My God, he’s telling me the world is flat!
Very unflattering, but funny, review in the New York Press.
Edit: I’ve been reading the Amazon.com reviews. Almost uniformly good, with the exceptions of folks who disagree with his stance on global capitalism. It’s the #3 book on Amazon right now.
What I find interesting, though, is that there seems to be very little criticism of his writing. Like I said, I haven’t read this book, so I may not be giving it a fair shake, but as the review points out, “flat” and “global” aren’t exactly useful metaphors in this sort of analysis. A few years ago, I would stop and read a Friedman op-ed piece, because at the time he seemed somewhat insightful and down-to-earth. Now his op-ed columns seem more like David Brooks’ — when you take out the obvious and look at the evidence for any new ideas, there isn’t much left.