I need to schedule my interview with him, I thought, as I dozed off on the couch to the sound of political writer Thomas L. Friedman purring from the TV last Saturday afternoon. He was talking to roundtable host Tim Russert instead of me. Skewed priorities. Nonetheless, Friedman sounded joyous and smart—still abuzz with his discovery of the flat world, as he has been for months, or years—who knows, the way time speeds by these days, the way nights here are days in India, the way business tasks in the U.S. get done overnight by workers around the globe and zapped back to our desktops by dawn as if by the tooth fairy. A lower-wage tooth fairy.
Such a conceptual collapse of time and economy is one of the changing paradigms that Friedman cited in his most recent book, The World Is Flat. When he speaks Thursday night at UNLV, he'll no doubt lead a think-hungry audience through a discussion of the "flatteners"—outsourcing, offshoring, supply-chaining and the like—which add up to, in Friedman's words, "the creation of a global Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration—the sharing of knowledge and work—in real time without regard to geography, distance, or in the near future, even language."
As I listen to Friedman speak to Russert, I think I should be taking notes, but then I think, Nah. It's just globalization, before slipping off into half-consciousness.
I had already read the book by that time. And like most readers, I would imagine, I had figured out upon reading the book jacket what is meant by "the world is flat" and yet, on page 177, Friedman was still explaining what he meant by the term. He is quite enchanted with this title, this idea that as Columbus went traveling and discovered the world was round, Friedman went traveling and discovered globalization or, oversimplified, a flattening of the economic playing field. I shared his enchantment, momentarily.
Momentarily.
Friedman, I should note, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times foreign affairs columnist, and author of other books including the one that introduced me and a slew of sheltered others to politics in the Mideast, From Beirut To Jerusalem, published in 1990. He's a very smart, educated man. More in tune with foreign affairs than most.
Still I can't help but think that Friedman arrived on this flat-world concept a teensy bit late, adjoining it with an overblown sense of novelty that is telling—not so much of the flat world, but of the human factor that, thankfully, tempers the off-the-leash technological and economic energy of globalization.
The very fact that Friedman is on a whistle-stop book tour; physically trekking around with his hardback book under arm, makes him a quaint reminder that the flatteners haven't finished their work yet.
Also, the notion that a man so attuned to the world's politics could be a little late with the big picture denotes the less-than-uniform onslaught of our understanding of the forces of globalization—which is enchanting in its off-kilterness. Friedman owns up to this in the first chapter of the book, titled, "While I Was Sleeping." (The great equalizer.)
And, the book's tone—first-person enamored-with-this-discovery—further emphasizes the absurd mixture of grand human production with ceaseless human foible. Friedman, for all of his gleanings into the economic and political forces of the whole planet, litters his book with boy-in-high-school phrases such as this musing to himself (and readers): "'Friedman,' I said to myself, looking at this scene, 'you are so twentieth-century ... You are so Globalization 2.0.'"
In fact many critics are annoyed by Friedman's folksy, mixed-metaphor-filled writing—the New York Press wrote, "The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it."
And although the Press' lambast is a tad more compelling read than The World Is Flat, the personalization of Friedman's world history book is a fabulous thing, precisely because it is so, well, irritating. It's so humanizing in the face of the sci-fi future. It's a not-so-gentle reminder that no matter how the world configures itself, here we are, mixed metaphors and all.
I did try to get my interview with Thomas Friedman, in between doing a bunch of other things that no one in India would do for me. (Yet.) Here's what his assistant told me about why our schedules wouldn't match up in time for my deadline: "He's on the West Coast today and he's unavailable ... Monday he's actually flying up to Hartford and driving his daughter back from Yale and he has an event that night we're hoping he'll be in time for ... "
And so when I began falling asleep to the sound of a journalist hawking his wares on Saturday afternoon TV, not even cable, mind you, I rolled over and ignored it. I napped soundly in the world populated by the perfect balance of genius and indifference.