The world is flat (Thomas L. Friedman)

Started reading this book with completely wrong expectation. I thought this would give me a glimpse of the future just like Future Shock. But none of that stuff. I was always impressed by the vision of Alvin Toffler and how he predicted the future almost 40 years ago. How some of those theories must have sounded down right stupid or exaggerated in late 60's.

Tough Luck. This cliched book talks about a theme that has been beaten to death. Every Indian working in IT for the last 10 years or so understands it as good as the dollar rupee conversion rate. Out sourcing, offshoring, supply chain, all of these were born more than 10 years back and are bread and butter to a million Indians, millions of Chinese and hundreds of companies.

Talking of these in 2004/5 is like Bolly wood making an Angry young man movie, a cop fighting against the goodaraj in 2007. Ram Gopal Verma's Siva for example.

I might be completely wrong here. I've only labored through 200 pages in hope of vision unfolding somewhere, but it does not seem like the Author would go beyond quoting Indian IT icons' most banal statements and dressing them up in prophetic garbs. e.g. "The playing field is being leveled" as stated by Nandan Nilekani and "The world is Flat" as understood by the Author.

Also there is a contradiction here. Round world actually brings people closer. The farthest points in a Flat world are in fact close neighbours in a round world.

Columbus would have turned a few times in his grave as Mr. Friedman compares himself to the greatest discoverer of all times. Especially when his discovery comes after millions of Indians, Chinese and Americans were doing business that way for about a decade. Some cheek eh!

May be the average American was still not aware this phenomenon till Mr Friedman finally cracked the mystery open. Though that would be hard to imagine given that America is at the cutting edge of this transformation and is actually shaping this revolution. Also I guess most Americans speak to Indian Customer Service Agents for most of their queries and complaints.

I really could not understand the cause for the runaway success of this book. But may be there is a treasure at the end of the rainbow. And so I shall wade through to the other side in search of a vision.