An energetic guide for a 21st-century journey
Thomas Friedman has a vision for the final edition of The World is Flat: anybody will be able to update it.
"It's been suggested to me that we actually turn the book into an open-source product. Just put it up on the web like Wikipedia [the collaborative online encyclopedia] and let people add to it," says the New York Times columnist, who is working on the second edition of his bestseller on ???-globalisation.
It is a vision that will turn his publishers - Penguin/Allen Lane in the UK and Farrar Straus Giroux in the US - pale with anxiety about the copyright implications, not to mention the risk that opponents of the book or its message about the benefits of globalisation will try to hijack the wiki edition. But it is a vision that is perfectly in tune with the picture of a globalised and inter???-connected world that Mr Friedman outlines.
A version of the book that can be constantly updated may also be the only way to guarantee that it remains current. The book's premise is that, at the beginning of this century, the world entered a new phase of globalisation, based on disruptive social, political and technological events ("flatteners", as Mr Friedman calls them) during the latter part of the 20th century.
In this flatter world, companies and individuals will be able to collaborate and compete more successfully, whatever their size and wherever they are. Those that fail to adapt will suffer, he says.
Mr Friedman - interviewed via mobile phone in Dallas, where he is collecting material for the second edition from EDS, the systems integration company - says the evolution towards an interconnected, flatter world has accelerated since the book was completed nearly a year ago.
This month, for instance, the audio version of The World is Flat became the top-selling podcast album on Apple's iTunes audio downloading site, says the author.
"That got me enormous juice with my teenage daughters. But what's really interesting is that when I started this book in March 2004, podcasting didn't exist.
"And what's even more interesting to me is: who invented podcasting? No???-body. It was an application that just emerged from the network."
Mr Friedman's evident passion for his topic was one reason why a distinguished panel of judges last week chose The World is Flat as the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year.
When assessing the shortlist of six titles, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's president and chief operating officer, said the book had made him "want to take my kids out of school [in the US] and put them into school in China or India".
"It's hard to think of another book that's having such an enormous impact," said another panellist, Jeffrey Garten, business professor at Yale School of Management, during the final judging session.
Yet, although he is grateful for the award and the ￡30,000 prize cheque, Mr Friedman insists he did not set out to write a "business book". It annoys him that some have criticised him for making chief executives "the main actors in this drama of global affairs".
Business people are prominent in the book, he says, because they and their companies are among the principal forces driving the kind of technological progress that he describes. But he insists that the rapid development of new and cheaper technology will have a much broader impact and that it puts new tools in the hands of people well beyond the business world.
"I know people in the intelligence world are using it. I know people in our armed forces are using it. I really saw myself as writing a book on foreign policy. What is the new platform that foreign policy is on? To understand that platform, you've got to understand the technology of it, you've got to understand the economics of it and you also have to understand who is driving it forward, because it's not static," he says.
Mr Friedman's book has its critics. Writing in the FT, Martin Wolf called it a "bad, good book" and attacked its flamboyant style and mixed metaphors, while recognising its enormous energy.
It is not a comfortable read for anyone with a 20th-century view of how the world works. In the chapter "This is not a test", Mr Friedman notes that, in the face of forces he describes, the developed world - the US, specifically - cannot "get by doing things the way we've been doing them".
Is there a risk, however, that business leaders and policymakers will simply be paralysed into inaction by the sheer pace and complexity of the developments that he describes?
Mr Friedman thinks not. The rapid evolution over the past year of what is known as "Web 2.0" - a flowering of internet companies and strategies, based on the growing availability of cheap or free software online - has made it possible for budding entrepreneurs and big companies to experiment with strategies without having to "bet the firm", he says.
"This platform has on it so much free software that I can start things much more cheaply. That's what's so cool about it: you don't need this huge amount of capital any more," he says.
He cites The New York Times's online initiative with TimesSelect - which requires readers to pay for access to articles by Mr Friedman himself and other columnists - as an example of the kind of experiment that entrepreneurs should now conduct. Mr Friedman says he was "very ambivalent" when the idea of charging for access to his work was first raised: "I understand we're caught between a paper platform and a digital platform. But at the same time, I also knew that once we did this it was surely going to limit the scope and reach of all the columnists."
He concluded, however, that: "You can test this out and do focus groups as much as you want but you're never going to know [if it works] until you try it."
The World is Flatcould propel Mr Friedman into the ranks of management gurus - a sort of Tom Peters for the 21st century. But it is a role he says he will resist. "I wrote this book so I would have a lens on how to understand the world and so I could be a foreign affairs columnist," he says.
The World is Flat is not just a paean to the globalisation of business, he points out. In it, the writer describes how the same tools that have allowed Dell of the US to build a global supply chain for computers allowed Osama bin Laden to build a global supply chain for terror attacks.
"What I discovered is that if you don't understand these kinds of systems, if you don't understand what companies are doing, what platform they're working on, you're not only missing the business world, you're also missing the terrorism world," Mr Friedman says.
"I'm thrilled this is a business book award and I'm thrilled that people in the business community value [the book]," he says. But he adds: "I'd like to think this book could win the best book on terrorism award - you know what I mean?"
The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalized World in the 21st Century,by Thomas L. Friedman (Penguin/Allen Lane; Farrar Straus Giroux)
For a full transcript of the interview with Thomas Friedman, video features and further details of the finalists for the award, go to
www.ft.com/bookaward世界正在加速变“平”
对
于《世界是平的》(The World is Flat)最终版本，托马斯?弗里德曼(Thomas Friedman)有一个设想：任何人都能对之进行更新。
把书放在网上？
这位《纽约时报》专栏作家表示：“一直有人向我建议，我们应把这本书确实变成一个开放源产品。就把它放在网上，像“维基百科”(Wikipedia)(协作撰写的在线百科全书)那样，让大家为其增添内容。”弗里德曼正致力于完成他这本有关全球化问题畅销书的第二版。
上述设想可要令其出版商――英国企鹅/艾伦莱恩出版社(Penguin/Allen Lane)和Farrar Straus Giroux出版社――对连带的版权问题大惊失色了，更不用说有这样的风险：该书的反对者或书中关于全球化益处的讯息将试图“打劫”其“维基版本”。不过，这正印证了弗里德曼所勾勒的全球化、相互关联的世界图景。
如果该书的一种版本能不断更新，这或许也是唯一保证它不过时的办法。该书的前提是，基于20世纪后半叶分裂的社会、政治和科技事件[ 弗里德曼称之为“变平因素(flatteners)” ]，世界在本世纪初进入了一个全球化的新阶段。
世界变得更平
在这个更“平”的世界里，企业和个人将能够更成功地协作、竞争，不管其规模大小，也不管他们身在何处。弗里德曼认为，那些无法适应的企业和个人会蒙受损失。
弗里德曼表示，自从大约一年前该书完成以来，世界已经越来越快地向相互联系、更“平”的方向发展。弗里德曼是在接受电话采访时作出上述表示的，当时他正身在达拉斯，从系统整合公司EDS那里为该书第二版收集资料。
比如，《世界是平的》的音频版本本月已成为苹果公司 iTunes 手机音频下载网站上卖得最好的播客文件，作者这样表示。
“这使我和我十几岁的女儿们产生很多共同语言。但真正有趣的是，当我2004年3月开始写这本书时，语音播客还不存在呢。”
“而我认为更加有趣的是：谁发明了播客？没人。这是刚在互联网上兴起的一种应用软件。”
评委的话
弗里德曼对他的话题充满激情，这也是上周某著名评审组授予《世界是平的》首届“《金融时报》和高盛年度商业书籍奖”(Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award)的原因之一。
在对最终入围的6部候选作品名单进行评估时，高盛集团总裁兼首席营运长劳埃德?布兰克费恩(Lloyd Blankfein)称，该书使他“想把自己的孩子从（美国的）学校领出来，送到中国或印度的学校去上学”。
另一位评审人员杰弗里?加滕(Jeffrey Garte)说：“很难想象还有哪本书会产生这样巨大的影响。” 加滕是耶鲁大学管理学院院长。
并非“商业书籍”
然而，尽管弗里德曼很高兴能获此奖及3万欧元奖金支票，但他坚称自己当初并不是打算写一本“商业书籍”。令他不悦的是，有人批评他令首席执行官成了“全球事务舞台上的主角”。
他表示，商务人士确实在该书中有显赫地位，因为就他所描述的那种技术进步而言，商务人士及其公司是主要推动力之一。不过他强调，成本更低廉的新技术迅速发展带来的影响更为广泛，商界以外人士也能因此掌握新的工具。
他指出：“我知道智能领域的人正在使用这种新技术，也知道陆海空三军的人在使用它。我就当自己是在写一本关于外交政策的书。外交政策所处的新平台是怎样的？为了了解该平台，你必须明白其科技水平，必须通晓其经济情况，而且由于它不是静态的，你还必须知道是谁在推动它前进。”
弗里德曼的书也遭到苛评。《金融时报》作家马丁?沃尔夫(Martin Wolf)称之为一本“差的好书”，他在认可该书巨大影响力的同时，抨击了它的浮华风格和混杂隐语。
对用20世纪眼光审视世界运转规律的任何人而言，此书都不是一本轻松的读物。在《这不是一个测试》一章中，弗里德曼指出，在他所描述的力量面前，发达国家世界――尤其是美国无法“靠延续从前的行事方式来实现目的”。
让无本经营成为可能
然而，是否存在这样的风险――商业领袖和政策制定者被他所描述的纯粹发展速度及复杂性而气馁，从而无所作为？
弗里德曼并不这么认为。他表示，在过去一年号称“Web 2.0”时代，新兴企业家和大公司提供了这样一种可能：在不必“赌公司”的条件下，进行战略试验。“Web 2.0”意味着众多互联网公司和战略的蓬勃发展，这基于在网上获得低价或免费软件日趋容易。
“在这一平台上有许多免费软件，使我做事的启动成本要低很多。这就是它很酷的地方：你不再需要巨额资本。”他说。
他援引了《纽约时报》和TimesSelect创立的网络服务――要求读者付费阅读弗里德曼和其他专栏作家的文章――作为例证，说明企业家现应进行的那类试验。弗里德曼表示，当付费阅读他作品的想法被首次提出时，他“非常矛盾”：“我明白我们夹在纸质平台和数字平台之间。但同时我也知道，一旦我们这么做，毫无疑问将限制所有专栏作家的影响范围。”
不过他总结道：“你可以对此进行验证，并只针对你想关注的目标群体，但如果你不尝试，你将永远无法知道(它是否奏效)。”
“我可能拥有一副透镜”
《世界是平的》一书可能将弗里德曼推入管理界领袖的行列――类似于21世纪的汤姆?彼得斯(Tom Peters)。但他表示他将抵制这个角色。他说：“我写了这本书，所以在如何理解世界方面，我可能拥有一副透镜。因此我能成为一个外事专栏作家。”
他指出，《世界是平的》不只是一曲对商业全球化的赞歌。书中，作者描述了这样一类工具，它们令美国戴尔公司(Dell)为消费者建立了全球供应链，同样也令奥萨马?本?拉登(Osama bin Laden)为恐怖袭击建立了全球供应链。
弗里德曼称：“我发现，如果你不理解这类系统，如果你不理解公司在做什么，它们在什么平台上工作，那么你不仅会错过商业界，你还会错过恐怖主义世界。”
“我为得到商业书籍奖而激动，我为商业圈重视(这本书)而激动，”他说。但他补充道：“我希望这本书获得最佳恐怖主义书籍奖――你懂我的意思吧？”
《世界是平的》：21世纪全球化世界简史，作者托马斯?弗里德曼 (英国企鹅/艾伦莱恩出版社; Farrar Straus Giroux出版社)
托马斯?弗里德曼采访记录、该奖最终入围者专题片和详细材料见
www.ft.com/bookaward
