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Business. Politics. Nonfiction. HTML: A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers We all sense it�??something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can't miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once�??and it is dizzying. In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike anything he has attempted before, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts. You will never look at the world the same way again after you read this book: how you understand the news, the work you do, the education your kids need, the investments your employer has to make, and the moral and geopolitical choices our country has to navigate will all be refashioned by Friedman's original analysis. Friedman begins by taking us into his own way of looking at the world�??how he writes a column. After a quick tutorial on that subject, he proceeds to write what could only be called a giant column about the twenty-first century. His thesis: to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet's three largest forces�??Moore's law (technology); the Market (globalization); and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss)�??are accelerating all at once. These accelerations are transforming five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community. Why is this happening? As Friedman shows, the exponential increase in computing power defined by Moore's law has a lot to do with it. The year 2007 was a major inflection point: the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new technology platform. Friedman calls this platform "the supernova"�??for it is an extraordinary release of energy that is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is creating vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world�??or to destroy it. Thank You for Being Late is a work of contemporary history that serves as a field manual for how to write and think about this era of accelerations. It's also an argument for "being late"�??for pausing to appreciate this amazing historical epoch we're passing through and reflecting on its possibilities and dangers. To amplify this point, Friedman revisits his Minnesota hometown in his moving concluding chapters; there, he explores how communities can create a "topsoil of trust" to anchor their increasingly diverse and digital populations. With his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, Friedman shows that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations�??if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community. Thank You for Being Late is Friedman's most ambitious book�??and an essential guide to th… (more)
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I particularly enjoyed Friedman's thoughts on careers and jobs. Young people must prove themselves to be very adaptable to change, market themselves effectively and pursue lifelong learning. A college or high school degree will not get you very far in today's business world or in the future.
In some ways I am envious. I have retired so I have no way of testing how well I would or will do in this type of accelerated change. This is a great book for young business oriented people and college graduates to read.
Regrettably I think that the election of 2016 proves that too many Americans are not adapting to change or the realities affecting their careers and life.
The early chapters deal with all the changes, mostly technological, that have occurred in recent years, with an emphasis on the last decade or two. There are a lot of examples dealing with computer related advances in hardware, software, and networks, mostly from the early days of personal computers to the present. He gives a lot of emphasis to 2007 because of the huge infrastructure and capacities that had recently erupted, with a lot of focus on big name companies of today which had origins that year. It's an incredible and very exciting history, one that I have encouraged my techie grandson to read, and one that I will probably re-read over the years.
Friedman also describes three large forces at work in the dawn of our new century - Technology, Globalization, and Mother Nature - that will be shaping our workplace, politics, ethics, geopolitics and community, i.e. environment. And opportunities. He also covers work place skills, and how they are changing, and how young people can best be prepared to deal with the future. There is also the very big issue of the pace of change. It seems so many things these days are obsolete before we get to take them out of the box. (Two months after I bought my iPhone 7 all I have been hearing is how great 8 will be.) Throughout the book, Friedman carefully builds links to help the reader understand we are coming from, where we are, and where we seem to be headed. Until the last chapters.
Then he does a nostalgia/community thing that for me derailed before pulling into the station. I am about the same age as Friedman, I too look back at my early Midwest days with a lot of good memories and strong emotions. I know that I often look at the past with rose tinted glasses. I suspect he has done the same. For example, I feel that (sadly) many of his concerns regarding the assimilation of new immigrants are out of touch in the current environment. And I never saw the fit with the preceding pages. Whatever, these last ninety-five pages just didn't work for me. So 5 stars for the first 350 or so and 1 star for the last 95. Oddly enough I recall loving only the first half of "From Beirut...." and most but not all of "The World is Flat.....". For some reason, he just doesn't seem to bring it home for me; maybe next time....
I admired the author's ability to wrap his hands and head around some extremely gnarly technology issues and to elucidate them in comprehensible layman's terms. Overall, Friedman's prose was OK, if inelegant -- but you're not reading a book like this for well-turned sentences. Originally, I was afraid that boiling down the primary forces of the current acceleration of change to an alliterative trio (Mother Earth, Market, Moore's Law) was overly precious and wouldn't work...but I warmed to the framing as the book proceeded. At other times, however, Friedman seemed overly cutesy, e.g. labeling the cloud as "the supernova."
I enjoyed the final few sections of TYFBL most of all, because they described a set of conditions at the local level in which social progress was not just possible but also tangible. I felt inspired by Friedman's examples, and am motivated to figure out how I might plug into contributing to the kind of social change he describes. Especially at this moment in our nation's history, heaven knows we all need to help.