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Sunday, May 01, 20051114977000
What Tom Friedman Means by "Flat"
"'What, Me Worry?'," by Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 29 April 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/opinion/29friedman.html (from Eschaton through tdaxp).
What to make of this Friedman quote on education?
India and China know they can't just depend on low wages, so they are racing us to the top, not the bottom. Producing a comprehensive U.S. response - encompassing immigration, intellectual property law and educational policy - to focus on developing our talent in a flat world is a big idea worthy of a presidency. But it would also require Mr. Bush to do something he has never done: ask Americans to do something hard.
He's talking about some sort of interpersonal connection -- one that can be "flat" or "not flat" (let's call that one steep). I earlier defiend the types of controls as
- implicit-explicit
- strong-weak
- horizontal-vertical
At first glance Friedman's "flat" just means "horizontal" -- a relationship defined by a lack of nonconsentual violence. But that's clearly wrong. A horizontal education system would mean one where students are there willingly, or maybe just that parents chose to send their kids to school. But I doubt Friedman truly supports that -- what if parents do not want to send their children to school?
Let's look at the other occurances of "flat" in Tom's article
But on the home front, this team has no big idea - certainly none that relates to the biggest challenge and opportunity facing us today: the flattening of the global economic playing field in a way that is allowing more people from more places to compete and collaborate with your kids and mine than ever before.
and
Indeed, we can't rely on importing the talent we need anymore - not in a flat world where people can now innovate without having to emigrate. In Silicon Valley today, "B to B" and "B to C" stand for "back to Bangalore" and "back to China," which is where a lot of our foreign talent is moving.
To show what Friedman means by "flat," let's look at two very different groups: religious courts in Iran and hippie drum circles.
Sharia in the Islamic Republic looks like this:
The red bars show the flow of power from greater to lesser. "Higher-ups" have power over "lower-downs." Being high means that you know the "right" way, while being low means that you need to be told the correct way.
Now, the hippies
The blue bars show friendship. The hippies are attatched to each other by common experiences, hopes, and desires. Additionally, there are no "higher-ups" or "lower-downs" -- everyone is recognized as having the same amount of authority (if you don't believe that's possible, then assume these are drugged hippies).
So then, what would this be:
The red lines symbolize vertical power, so somone has police authority. Yet everyone is on the same level, so there are not leaders or followers. This is Friedman's idealized school system -- it is a flat vertical network
Friedman is not an anarchist or a libertarian. He believes in the importance of goverment. He also believes that the "top-down there are experts who know better" approach is now out of date. In Friedman's philosophy, people should no longer "act steep" (externalize leadership to others) but should "act flat" (internalize leadership to themselves).
The opposite of a flat vertical relationship would be a steep horizontal one
The best example of this is the Catholic Church. There is a definite right way and a definite chain of command. But anyone can leave whenever they wish.
There is much more to say on flat-steep controls, but those are posts for another time...
Update: Twenty Onwards has posted a detailed review of The World is Flat. Good Reputation Sleeping also has thoughts.
14:50 Posted in Connectivity, Thomas Friedman | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this
Comments
Very much enjoyed your post on Friedman.
In fact, I will thank Bill Rice for linking to your
site. I read all posts that are up and plan on
checking out the archives. I have added you to favorites. You and your readers may enjoy
this article written by Matt Taibbi. I have
pasted an excerpt here. It is laugh out loud
funny. Hope the URL still works.
FLATHEAD
The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman.
By Matt Taibbi
"This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses."
Regards
Posted by: larwyn | Monday, May 02, 2005
Thanks for the compliments!
-Dan
Posted by: Dan | Tuesday, May 03, 2005