Friedman packs house at UNLV

Friday, May 13, 2005 | 11:08 a.m.

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman says Americans better get used to the idea that the world is flat, thanks to technology-driven globalization.

Speaking before a packed house Thursday night at UNLV's Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall, Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, outlined a new era of globalization that he said was sparked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

This new era allows individuals around the globe to collaborate on multiple levels as never before via computers and fiber-optic cable and has leveled the economic playing field between America and nations such as India and China, he said.

But as he pointed out in his new book, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century," much of this globalization occurred "while we were asleep," distracted by events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Enron scandal and dot.com bust.

"9/11 distracted us from the president to the journalists on down," Friedman said. "The dot.com bust made people silly. It made people think globalization was over, when in fact it was just going through a whole new phase."

Friedman's appearance was part of the university's ongoing Barbara Greenspun Lecture Series and was hosted by the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism & Media Studies. Barbara Greenspun is publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. Her husband, the late Hank Greenspun, founded the Sun in 1950 and was publisher and editor until his death in 1989.

The idea for Friedman's book came from a trip he took to India to study outsourcing -- the controversial practice of companies shipping call center work and other tasks overseas or even to people's homes in this country in order to reduce labor costs. That trip followed his coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I got sicker and sicker and it wasn't the Indian food," Friedman said. "While I was off covering the wars something was happening in this global society and I completely missed it."

A man he met in India told him that the global economic playing field had been levelled "and you Americans are not ready."

"What he was telling me is that the global economic field was flat and he was telling me the world was flat," Friedman said.

He said that explains why Japanese firms that used to operate out of Tokyo are shifting much of their work to Japanese-speaking Chinese citizens. But there is also outsourcing that occurs within the United States, such as the JetBlue Airways call center in Salt Lake City that is run by "housewives and retirees."

"If you call JetBlue, you might get Betty in her bedroom," Friedman said. "It's a completely home reservation system." And then there is McDonald's, which relays some drive-through orders to a call center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and then relays the orders back to the restaurant, saving the eatery 30 seconds per order, he said.

Friedman outlined three eras of "great globalization." The first era, from 1492 to 1800, saw the world shrink from "large to medium" as nations engaged in colonialism and the quest for raw materials. Next was the period from 1800 to 2000, when corporations engaged in globalization to mobilize labor, shrinking the world "from a size medium to a size small."

And the third era, he said, began around 2000, shrinking the world from size small to size tiny and centering itself on collaboration among individuals and small groups. Whereas the first two eras were dominated by white Westerners, Friedman said the current era will be "dominated by people of every color."

The fall of the Berlin Wall "allowed us to see the world as a single, flat plane for the first time," he said.

That was followed by the Microsoft Windows operating platform for computers and the 1995 formation of Netscape, which he credited as the founder of the modern Internet even though it had been invented years earlier by scientists.

"What it gave us was the browser, the Netscape browser," Friedman said. "It was the Netscape browser that brought the Internet to life."

Then came the dot.com boom and bubble, during which there was an "insane investment in fiber-optic cable," which connected "one end of the world to the other."

Computer applications became standardized so that it was easy, for example, for people to do their banking over the Internet. And people could collaborate in multiple ways.

"What we got was the genesis movement for the flattening of the world," Friedman said. "More people could connect with others in more ways. Outsourcing is just a new form of collaboration."

Friedman also addressed numerous forms of modern collaboration. Examples include individuals around the globe who have worked together to invent a new computer operating platform and businesses that find unique ways to partner with others on the delivery of goods and services. And there are airlines that enable you to print out your boarding passes at home before you arrive at the airport.

But he said Americans must be prepared to face the fact that India, China and the former Soviet Union are now part of this flat, global economy. Even if only 10 percent of the 3 billion people in those countries are plugged into this economy, that's still 300 million people, which he said is double America's workforce.

He related how, when growing up in Minnesota, his parents told him to eat his dinner because people in India and China were starving.

Friedman now tells his two daughters to study because "people in India and China are starving for your jobs."