I’m sure you’ve heard of Thomas Friedman and his book The World is Flat (currently selling in version 3.0). Here is a lecture he gave at MIT not too long ago about the his groundbreaking work. The entire lecture is quite long—so if you haven’t got the patience to listen to that much talking over vacation week you might just want to skip past the introduction (where Friedman discusses his background and what led him to this topic) and go straight to 5:15 in when he gives a history lesson on how we got to this point. In hindsight it all makes perfect sense…but at the time no one could have predicted that the decisions that were made when you were all babies would have produced this crazy world where we are all connected through the technology that gave us Facebook and YouTube….but also gave the world the ability to not just socialize across continents, but to actually work across continents.
Also, see 33:10 when Friedman discusses China and 36:56 when he examines the concept of the “Green Revolution” which he says is more of a “party” than a “revolution.” What do you think?
1 response so far ↓
1
Bill Genereux
// Apr 18, 2009 at 7:48 pm
I listened to the Friedman lecture on my iPod recently. I agree it’s more like a party than a revolution. Last year I read a book written in 1973 that recognized the future would hinge upon energy distribution. Pretty sad that 36 years later we are only beginning to figure this out.
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