Thomas Friedman Misses the Point
I’m told that Thomas Friedman has been described as the smartest man in the world, but you could never tell it from his recent book, The World Is Flat. Perhaps he’s has an insight or two that are right on the money, but that’s like a stopped watch being precisely accurate two times every day.
For starters, his basic metaphor is entirely wrong. Friedman wants to emphasize the leveling process that computer technologies have achieved; how the internet makes the sum total of human knowledge available to anyone with a computer and a connection. How open sourcing is creating a democratic bottom-up environment for the creation of software, so different from the proprietary, top-down world of Microsoft. But flat?
If the world were flat, Bangalore would be no closer to Palo Alto than it is now. And there would be some single place that was located at the center of everywhere. Whereas the world Friedman is trying to describe is exactly the opposite. Nowhere is the center of anyplace, and in fact, everyplace is equidistant from everyplace else. Stated otherwise, everywhere is exactly everywhere. It’s all the same place. That’s not a flat surface; I’m not exactly sure what it is, but the first description that comes to mind is a point. So the world isn’t two dimensional. It’s zero dimensional.
Except that it's not really zero-dimensional, because it has depth. Amazingly, in his description of the ten forces that flattened the world, the ten great developments that brought about this democratic and global change we are experiencing, he never once mentions hypertext. Perhaps that’s understandable for a guy who lives and works on the printed page, who still writes a linear column (or book) that is supposed to be read from start to finish, the same way that Gutenberg’s Bible was read. But one of the most remarkable things about the web is that, unlike a book or magazine, a webpage has infinite depth. The reader is not limited by the arbitrary organization of the author, but can, with hypertext, link through to any number of other pages, and from these to another series of pages, and so on, ad infinitum. This depth changes the way the reader uses the page -- even sees the page; hypertext will change cognition. But Friedman doesn’t notice this.
Look at the examples he uses to emphasize the ‘changes’ the internet has brought. Early on, he tells us how Indian accountants are now processing tax returns. Now this may demonstrate that certain businesses are changing the way they produce their work, having folks in India do drudge work that used to be done in local back room operations. But aside from the fact that people are doing the exact same work overseas, instead of in a different room or office, what has changed? Worse is the example on page 79 of how we’ll make dentist appointments – by checking computerized calendars, not hard copy, and by getting e-mail reminders, and computer generated phone messages the night before. This is really nothing at all. Friedman marvels over this scenario, but after you strip away the technology, it’s just having machines do the same old stuff we once did without machines, or maybe with pencils and telephones.
Instead of gushing about global business, Friedman should be wondering about why cell phones and digital cameras got married. Because that’s a sign of some changes that are eventually going to make Friedman and his column, and his book, and his newspapers, and even this blog irrelevant. I’m just an idiot, and not a genius like Friedman, but I think this marriage heralds changes in our very conception of language. Already we see that facets of language – certainly spelling, but also grammar and syntax – are changing or disappearing. If we begin communicating through images, what will happen to language? And beyond that, what will happen to cognition? How will our process of thinking change?
Friedman should have read McLuhan before he undertook to write about the internet. More than forty years ago, before the internet, before laptop computers, before graphical interface, before the mouse, back in the days of punch cards and room-size computers, McLuhan described the global village. And before he became a pop star philosopher, he wrote Understanding Media, which described how media didn’t just change our manner of communicating, but changed us. How the electronic media were moving us away from the linear world, and the linear thought processes of the printed word. McLuhan saw around the corner, and Friedman is really unable to see what’s right in front of him. And worse than that, because he’s ultimately a solipcist, he thinks that what he sees is what is actually going on. From Friedman's perspective there's nothing more to the world than what exists in his very limited perceptions. And unfortunately, those limited perceptions aren’t up to the task he has undertaken.
For starters, his basic metaphor is entirely wrong. Friedman wants to emphasize the leveling process that computer technologies have achieved; how the internet makes the sum total of human knowledge available to anyone with a computer and a connection. How open sourcing is creating a democratic bottom-up environment for the creation of software, so different from the proprietary, top-down world of Microsoft. But flat?
If the world were flat, Bangalore would be no closer to Palo Alto than it is now. And there would be some single place that was located at the center of everywhere. Whereas the world Friedman is trying to describe is exactly the opposite. Nowhere is the center of anyplace, and in fact, everyplace is equidistant from everyplace else. Stated otherwise, everywhere is exactly everywhere. It’s all the same place. That’s not a flat surface; I’m not exactly sure what it is, but the first description that comes to mind is a point. So the world isn’t two dimensional. It’s zero dimensional.
Except that it's not really zero-dimensional, because it has depth. Amazingly, in his description of the ten forces that flattened the world, the ten great developments that brought about this democratic and global change we are experiencing, he never once mentions hypertext. Perhaps that’s understandable for a guy who lives and works on the printed page, who still writes a linear column (or book) that is supposed to be read from start to finish, the same way that Gutenberg’s Bible was read. But one of the most remarkable things about the web is that, unlike a book or magazine, a webpage has infinite depth. The reader is not limited by the arbitrary organization of the author, but can, with hypertext, link through to any number of other pages, and from these to another series of pages, and so on, ad infinitum. This depth changes the way the reader uses the page -- even sees the page; hypertext will change cognition. But Friedman doesn’t notice this.
Look at the examples he uses to emphasize the ‘changes’ the internet has brought. Early on, he tells us how Indian accountants are now processing tax returns. Now this may demonstrate that certain businesses are changing the way they produce their work, having folks in India do drudge work that used to be done in local back room operations. But aside from the fact that people are doing the exact same work overseas, instead of in a different room or office, what has changed? Worse is the example on page 79 of how we’ll make dentist appointments – by checking computerized calendars, not hard copy, and by getting e-mail reminders, and computer generated phone messages the night before. This is really nothing at all. Friedman marvels over this scenario, but after you strip away the technology, it’s just having machines do the same old stuff we once did without machines, or maybe with pencils and telephones.
Instead of gushing about global business, Friedman should be wondering about why cell phones and digital cameras got married. Because that’s a sign of some changes that are eventually going to make Friedman and his column, and his book, and his newspapers, and even this blog irrelevant. I’m just an idiot, and not a genius like Friedman, but I think this marriage heralds changes in our very conception of language. Already we see that facets of language – certainly spelling, but also grammar and syntax – are changing or disappearing. If we begin communicating through images, what will happen to language? And beyond that, what will happen to cognition? How will our process of thinking change?
Friedman should have read McLuhan before he undertook to write about the internet. More than forty years ago, before the internet, before laptop computers, before graphical interface, before the mouse, back in the days of punch cards and room-size computers, McLuhan described the global village. And before he became a pop star philosopher, he wrote Understanding Media, which described how media didn’t just change our manner of communicating, but changed us. How the electronic media were moving us away from the linear world, and the linear thought processes of the printed word. McLuhan saw around the corner, and Friedman is really unable to see what’s right in front of him. And worse than that, because he’s ultimately a solipcist, he thinks that what he sees is what is actually going on. From Friedman's perspective there's nothing more to the world than what exists in his very limited perceptions. And unfortunately, those limited perceptions aren’t up to the task he has undertaken.
posted by pops | 10:49 PM
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