Finally finished reading the Updated and Expanded edition of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century this week. (It helped that I got sick and had nothing better to do.) I don’t read much books lately, but The World Is Flat is the best non-fiction I’ve read in a long time.

I got the book for 600 pesos at A Different Bookstore and I was initially choosing between it and Freakonomics. Good thing that it was Friedman’s book I bought, despite the expense because the book is quite enlightening.

The World Is Flat is Thomas Friedman’s look at how today’s new era of globalization is affecting countries, companies, and individuals. This new era of globalization is markedly different from the previous form of globalization (where companies have become multinationals) because now, the economic platform is such that the playing field has been levelled to such a great degree that small groups of people and even individuals can now compete against big companies and that the big companies can now leverage costs and resources across the whole globe. The world is flat means that the playing field is now highly level (a methaphor critics have been lambasting).

In the first half of the book, Friedman dicusses the so-called ten flatteners—events, activities, things, and concepts that helped make the world flat and how these converge to help make the world flatter than before. These include the fall of the Berlin Wall, the popularization of the World Wide Web, the ability of individuals to upload content to the Internet, the outsourcing of business and processes to India and other developing countries, the rise of the integrated global supply-chain for just-in-time delivery of goods and services, and the rise of mobile personal computing.

The rest of the book deals with the effects this flattening of the world has on America, the developing world, and companies. Friedman discusses that yes, many white-collar “American” jobs will be lost to India and the like, but he argues that America will be better off than before, only if the country manages to upgrade its education and be less complacent of its hegemony, something the Bush administration has been doing little of.

Friedman, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning senior journalist of The New York Times, is such a great distiller of trends and writes with such great eloquence that it’s very very easy to digest his book. He has a knack for looking at both the trees and the forest as a whole and is able to explain it all with high clarity.

Although, Friedman is somewhat tech-savvy and is definitely not clueless, my first reaction when I read this introduction to BitTorrent was a big WTF: “BitTorrent is a Web site that allows users upload their own online music libraries and download other people’s at the same time.” Nevertheless, minor quibbles like this one does not detract from the overall quality of the book. You’ll learn a lot from reading this and it inspires you to continue learning in order to take advantage of the flat world.

One thing I didn’t like about this book, and this is quite personal, is that India and China are given undue attention. In discussing the effect of the flat world, anecdotes from India, China, Japan, Mexico, Russia, the United States, and Europe are presented. Not much attention is given to Southeast Asia and the Philippines in particular. (One story goes in particular at how Indian graphic artists are a new-found hotbed for outsourcing the creation of animations and graphic art; something the Filipinos have been doing for quite some time already.)

One depressing thing you learn from the book is that while America is not preparing its citizens enough for the flat world, the Philippines itself is not faring any better. The strategy of our government is reactionary and too nearsighted (e.g., upgrading English education just so we can capture the call-center market) and that long-term solutions (e.g., upgrading the public school system and curriculum and emphasizing competency in science and math) are not being considered.

To wrap this up, I highly recommend reading this book. It’s extremely informative and quite easy to comprehend. You’ll definitely pick up several points worth considering, especially ones that you can apply in your personal life.