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Today, to welcome to MIT
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Thomas Friedman
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Who as you know is the foreigner affair columnist for the New York Times
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I will admit up front
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That it’s one of the few columns I read with great regularity
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Finding the content always stimulating, whether I not agree with him one hundred percent
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But as I told him earlier today
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His titles are the best in the world
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Anybody who could write “Dancing Alone”, or “last week, broccoli”
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All of which enables you to remember broccoli sprawls
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Whatever… Broccoli would be better!
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I think as you know, he has won 3 Pulitzer prizes
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3 books that all of us know very well
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From Beirut to Jerusalem
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“The Lexus and the Olive Tree”, which I remember Alex Darvel introduced me to a couple years ago
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A little more recently, “Longitudes and Latitudes”
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He’s a graduate of our neighboring institution, Brandeis University, in Mediterranean studies
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And got a master degree in Middle East studies at Oxford University
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So the reason he’s here today
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I’m gonna tell you the truth
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I was in a hotel somewhere rather late at night
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Doing what I usually do in hotel. I was lying in bed, flipping through channels
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And I came across the last few minutes of the Charlie Rose Show
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And Charlie was interviewing Tom; they are having a great discussion
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He’s there talking about all his flat there, I’m listening
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And all a sudden, I recognized with a startle
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That here is a really important, powerful public voice
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In a very articulate manner
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Speaking the things that are very important to us here at MIT
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Things such as the values of openness
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And things such as the importance of science and technology
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And importance of young men and young women being educated in these fields, to the future of this country
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In addition, of course
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To the fundamental hypothesis, a fundamental notion
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Of helping us to understand a little more clearly, some of the most important trends going on in the world
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He was of course, discussing his new book, “The World Is Flat”
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Which is in its second week, I guess, at number 1 on the New York bestseller list
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So, in just a moment, Tom is going to address us
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He is going to take a little Q&A at the end of that
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We’ll cut the things off just about 5’o clock
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But there after starting at 5:15
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There will be a reception. I don’t know how many people’s food was planned for
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And the book signing downstairs in the Bush room, 10-105
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Tom，welcome to MIT!
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Thank you very much, thank you
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Chuck，thank you very much for having me. It’s a treat and an honor to be here.
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I had an enormously stimulating day already
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So, I look forward to this conversation
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Thank you also for giving my book titles right
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You know, I’ve often been introduced to author of “From Beirut to Lebanon”
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“The Lexus and the Palm Tree”, that’s a popular one
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And “Latitudes and Attitudes” – it’s not a Jimmy Buffet song
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And thank you also for noting that my book ascended to number 1 this week in the New York Times bestsellers list
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I finally made it ahead of Jane Fonda
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Because I was going to retitle my book “Flat World, Flat Abs” if I did not go up so…
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But I made it, so…
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I thought I’ll talk for the next 30 minutes or so, of just the origins of this book
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The accidental way it came about
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And give you a sense of core’s essence and really look forward to a dialog
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This book really was an accident
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For those of you who read my column know that I became the front columnist January 1995
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Between 1995 to Sep 10th 2001
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My column really oscillated between what I would call “Lexus issues” and “Olive Tree issues”
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Issues about trades, technology, finance
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Many issues about geopolitics and ethnic conflicts
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And I was really in that kind of oscillation mode, I say right up until 9/11
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When read of what happened that day, I really dropped the whole Lexus story like a stone
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And went off and cover the Olive tree wars
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I really spend 3 years after 911, traveling almost exclusively in the area of Muslin world
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Trying to understand the roots of 911, and covering the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq
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And I was really in that mode right up to last January, January of 2004, about 16 months ago
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When I started doing documentary recently for Discovery channel, we’ve done one of the roots of 911
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We did one on the wall that Israel built in the west bank
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And in January of 2004, we’re sitting around with our Discovery New York Times team
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Trying to figure out what to do our next documentary on
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And at the time, the issue of America’s standing in the world; the America’s low stand in the world was a very hot issue
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And so I had this idea, I said why don’t we…
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Why don’t we go at call centers, all over the world?
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And interview young people who spend their days imitating Americans
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And what they think of America
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I thought I make a fun kind, almost double mirror
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And we are literarily budgeting that show
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when a certain presidential democratic hopeful named John Kerry
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Came on with his blast against “Benedict Arnold executives” who outsource
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Suddenly, it recalls the whole issue of outsource. It just exploded onto the world stage
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And onto the front page of the Business Weekends, on Fortune, on Forbes, and New York Times, and on Wall street Journal.
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So, I said, you know, time out
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Why don’t we just go to Bangalore, the outsource in capital of India
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And the Silicon Valley of India, and do a documentary called The Other Side of Outsourcing
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Where we look at these phenomena from the ground up
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And that’s what we did
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And so on February 15th of 2004, I set off to Bangalore with our Discovery crew
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And we shot about 60 hours of interviews, in a course of 10 to 11 days
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And over the course of those 60 hours of interviews, I got progressively sicker and sicker
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It was not the food
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It was the sense I got with each passing interview
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That while I had been sleeping
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While I had been covering the 911 wars
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Something really big that happened, in this globalization story
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And I had completely missed it
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That thought hit me somewhere between the interview with the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to do my taxes from Bangalore
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And the one who wanted to write my new software from Bangalore, and the one who want to read my X-rays from Bangalore, and the ones who want to trace my lost luggage on Delta Airlines from Bangalore
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That while I had been sleeping, something really big had happened, and I couldn’t explain it
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In fact, I wish I could show you the outtakes of the interviews
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You’d be sitting across the table from Jerry Rao, who on to company called Mphasis. It’s a part of a group that done 400’ 000 American tax returns from India last year
你坐在Mphasis公司的負責人Jerry Rao對面，
他們的集團去年在印度幫四十萬美國人退稅
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And I say to him, Jerry, what happened? I missed something!
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How can you be doing this?
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What happened?
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While the last interview we did was with a friend with mine, Nandan Nilekani, who has Infosys, the CEO of Infosys, which is one of the premier Indian high tech companies
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Nandan and I were sitting on the couch outside his office before the filming began
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I was doing a kind of pre-interview with him
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And one point he said to me: “Tom, I’ve got to tell you”
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The global economic playing field is being leveled
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The global economic playing field is being leveled
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And you Americans are not ready
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Oh, I wrote that down in my little notebook
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The global economic playing field is being leveled
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And after the interview I got on my jeep, and went back to my hotel
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The whole time back in that ride, I kept rolling over in my head what Nandan had said
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The global economic playing field is being leveled. And finally it occur to me what Nandan was saying was that the global economic playing field is being flattened.
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And then, then I thought of this book
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I said to myself, oh, my god, he’s telling the world is flat
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He’s telling me the world is flat, and he’s citing this as the great achievement in human development
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That we’ve made the world flat
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While when back to my hotel, I called my wife
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This is exactly how it happened, I said: “Honey, I’m gonna write a book called The World Is Flat”
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She thought I was stark raving mad
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But I came home; I called the publisher in New York Times, and my boss Gail Collins, the editor of page
但我回到家，我通知紐約時報的發行人、
通知我的老闆，版面編輯Gail Collins
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Guys, I’ve gotta go on leave
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I’ve gotta go on leave immediately
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Because my software needs updating
The framework through which I'm analyzing foreign affairs needs updating
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I am seeing things out there and I cannot understand and explain
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If I don't go on leave immediately, I’m gonna write something really stupid in the New York Times
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It's a great way to get to leave, I have to say
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Very hard to say no
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So we worked it out basically
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And I eventually got three months’ leave
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And during that time, basically
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Between March 15th and December 15th
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In a complete frenzy of obsession really
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I wrote this book
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Let me just go through the first three chapters very quickly
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The first chapter is called, I think it properly now: While You Were Sleeping
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And I begin the book by noting that Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492 for a shorter route to India
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That's where Columbus was going in 1492
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There the Moslem powers of that day had blocked the overland routes
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And he didn't want to go around the horn of Africa, so Columbus sailed west
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He had the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria
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He never did find India
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But he called the people he ran into Indians, and we call them that till this day
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And he came home and told his wife, "Honey, I've accidentally discovered the world is round"
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I set off for India 512 years later
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I knew just which direction I was going
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I sailed east
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I had Lufthansa business class
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And a GPS satellite that popped up in my seat told me exactly where I was
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And I came home and told my wife, "Honey, I've accidentally discovered the world if flat"
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And the first chapter really goes through all the encounters I had in India
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That led me to this conclusion
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But unlike Columbus, I kept going east
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I next went to Dalian in China
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The capital of outsourcing for Japan
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This town, a major town in northeast China
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Where thousands upon thousands of Japanese-speaking Chinese
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Are now running the backrooms, writing the software and doing the business processing for major Japanese multinationals and major American multinationals formerly based in Tokyo
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Let me repeat that, in case you misheard me, ok
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In light of the recent headlines in China
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Tens of thousands of Japanese-speaking Chinese
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Are today running the backrooms of major Japanese multinationals from Dalian
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Where it is now a requirement in many universities that you study two years of Japanese
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In order to have access to this incredibly burgeoning market of outsourcing from Japan
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And then I kept going east, and I went to Colorado
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And I really went east
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And I called Jet Blue one day to make an airline reservation
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I was really doing a little bit of research
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And I got a rather elderly sounding woman on the phone, she was very friendly
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And I asked her if Jet Blue flew from Washington to Atlanta
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She said, no, they didn't
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Finally I said, "Madam, could I ask you your name?"
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And she said, "My name is Betty"
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