I just listened to Thomas Friedman’s presentation at MIT which is available online as a streaming video. It’s over an hour long and covers the first three chapters of his book, The World is Flat, which I have previously mentioned. Having read the book, I’d recommend the video as a good overview (including some of the same stories) and then you can decide whether you want more information and purchase the book. Friedman is quite entertaining in this lecture and you can tell that he’s been on the speaking circuit for a while.
Confession time .. I’ve always been just a tad annoyed that guys like Friedman get so much publicity for an idea that some of us figured out and/ or forecasted quite a while before he pronounced that *the world is flat*. But hey .. he wrote a book and I didn’t .. all I’ve put together is a web site. But I do think that the impacts of being wired and interconnected does lead to some flattenings .. and I think that the implications are greater than just flattening. The governments and legislators are doing their best to erect barriers and keep things more or less status quo, many corporations are ignoring the possibilities for flexibility, responsiveness and innovation, our individual and small group behaviours are changing, economic logics are changing … I could go on but probably shouldn’t ;-)