Buckyball Globalization

Zak writes, correctly, that I am not the anti-Friedman:

Many have read Thomas L. Friedman's book, The World is Flat. I'm sure to many, like myself, it was an eye-opener to global competition.  He described how a McDonald's restaurant was outsourcing even the drive-through order taking out of the U.S.  Friedman described how India had taken advantage of the Y2K software refactoring to train its software professionals and compete against the U.S. for future software contracts.  There is much, much, more to the book, all describing outsourcing and global competition.  A new book though, explains there are some buckyballs or spikes to this flat perspective of global competition, and even living.  What does your city say about you? describes the new book, Who's Your City? Richard Florida explains that yes, Friedman is correct that with today's technology, you can live anywhere on the planet and essentially telecommute to your coworkers.  However, despite this flatness, professions have developed critical mass in certain cities.  Nashville - music, Los Angeles - film, New York - finance, and so on.  To have a splash in a profession, you need to be physically located within that critical mass.

Exactly.

Comments

[john trenouth]

Metaphors seem to be a lot more meaningful than just rhetorical cleverness.

So while Friedman's flatness has a certain analytical truthfulness, it doesn't quite match experience (at least not my experience). Spikiness is a lot closer, but it too distorts the case from experience.

How's this for another physical metaphor for the issue...

take a map of the world and fold it origami style it into a shape where places like Tokyo, London, and Dubai touch each other, where Chicago, New York and Dallas touch each other, and where Moose Jaw and Messina are as far from each other as possible.

So perhaps the world is neither flat nor spiky, but rather the world is origami.

[Zoe B]

Great image!