The World is Flat - when read after six years of publication!

Hi Guys,

I thought I would be writing a review of the book when I started reading it yesterday. But then after reading some 50 pages, I knew I was not going to read further. It was then I realized the timing of reading a Non Fiction book is very important. In the fast moving world, a lag of 2 years would mean much.

The book I started reading was ‘The World is Flat’ by Thomas L. Friedman. A journalist by profession, he has written about how the world has become more and more flat in the 21st century. The book was released in 2006 and the book is a much acclaimed book and has received many awards. My college library decided to buy a huge bunch of these books and I happened to see them. Just because of the reason that there was a huge bunch of these books and the cover was interesting, I wanted to read the book.

After starting to read the book, I realized that the book would have been a good read in 2006, but not anymore. The author says about the different incidences and technologies that helped the world to become a global village. All the recent growth stories of IT companies in India and manufacturing companies in China, we know many of the facts told in the book.

When I started reading the book, I thought 2006 is just 6 years back and it is a comparatively new book. But I didn’t realize many things and in particular the growth of technology over the years. When my brother joined an IT organization back in 2005, not many people knew about the Organization. We had to explain about the company to people. But, today the phenomenal growth has made many people aware about the industry. In 2006, not many of knew about the Social networking sites or Skype. The concept of Outsourcing was there, but again not many of us knew.

I am still not sure of how many people know about the technologies for our mind has a tendency to believe that everyone knows what we know and everyone doesn’t know what we don’t know. But, I am pretty sure that the book is written for people in Corporate Organizations and everyone in the organizations must be aware of these concepts now, which makes the book an outdated one.

The other thing is the book has no detailed analysis and is just like an extended magazine article. So, when the facts are known you don’t have much use.

All this makes me realize that when I start reading a Non Fiction book next time, I need to be sure of the context of the book, the time of publication and its relevance to today’s world.

Happy Reading!!!

P.S: The above thoughts are my personal opinion. Many of you can find the book interesting and know more from reading the book.