thomas l. friedman

Although I've been scaling back on my news reading, I still enjoy Thomas L. Friedman's New York Times column. I'm still working on his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization and I just found out that he's published a new book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Washington Post Book World review). (I'm going to wait until the book comes out in paperback so I can finish The Lexus and the Olive Tree first.) Through other reading, especially The Economist, I am somewhat familiar with the topics Friedman addresses in his writing, but his writing is so good and so accessible to general audiences that I like reading his work, not only to get his viewpoint on the topic, but just to read great writing. Friedman has a way of taking a somewhat complex topic with social, political, economic issues, and explaining it clearly to the audience, without removing or glossing over the details. The other thing I like about his writing is his travel stories and journalistic adventures, although secondary to the topic at hand, they are a fun read.

This Thursday 7 April, Does Europe Hate Us? Thomas Friedman Reporting premiers on the Discovery Channel at 8pm and again at 11pm. Here's the synopsis:

With the European Union on the threshold of redefining the global balance of power for the 21st Century, the continuing confrontation between the U.S. and Europe has profound implications for the future. Thomas Friedman explores the hatred toward America.

I am looking forward to checking it out, especially since I liked watching The Other Side of Outsourcing: Thomas Friedman Reporting.

Not directly related to Friedman is a series I heard on Marketplace (airs on public radio) on The Surprising Legacy of Y2K. One of those legacies is the global technology/services outsourcing market that we have today. Pre-Y2K, programmers in India learned on older COBOL-based mainframe systems because that was the only technology available (costwise) to them at the time. Once we realized Y2K would cause technical problems here in the US, companies found resources in India in terms of professionals working for a lower wage who also knew these older systems really well. Those US companies hired firms in India to help with the Y2K conversions and migrations. Turns out companies in India then invested their earnings in infrastructure (new computers and faster telecommunications), which then set them up to be in a great position post-Y2K. With faster telecommunications, they could run call centers. With upgraded computers, they were prepared for the next wave of software development. So even though the Y2K problems (and contracts) were over, US companies decided to keep the Indian companies on to do further software upgrades and development. Granted, there are still major issues still being tackled, such as project management and quality control, but with labor being significantly cheaper, there's still room to make mistakes and learn without hurting the bottom line too much. For those that think that India will come to dominate the technology industry, lest we forget how fluid globalization is. Let's go back to Friedman in The Other Side of Outsourcing:

The impact of outsourcing on India as a whole isn't quite as dramatic. India's outsourcing revenues amount to a little more than 2 percent of its $600 billion economy, and the inflow of formerly American jobs hasn't made much of a dent in a nationwide unemployment rate of 8 percent — more than two points higher than the present joblessness figures in the United States.

Even in prosperous Bangalore, there are not enough jobs to go around. Recently, according to the Express India newspaper Web site, a melee erupted in front of a major software company where 8,000 applicants had been waiting in line for hours to interview for jobs. And critics of globalization and free trade warn that whatever economic benefits are gained by India and other outsourcing countries may not last. If the model for outsourcing holds true, skilled jobs eventually will flow from those places to countries with even lower wages, such as Vietnam.

The story continues...