book review of thank you for being late

1. BOOK REVIEW OF
THANK YOU FOR BEING
LATE
-THOMAS L. FREIDMAN
Group Members
Dhruv Patel-(17BCH011)
Payal Raghuvanshi-(17BCH037)
Saloni Solanki (17BCH047)
BhautikThesiya (17BCH053)

2. About the Author
■ Thomas Loren Friedman (born July 20, 1953) is an American political commentator
and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for The
New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle
East, globalization, and environmental issues.

3. Book Review
■ The world is changing more quickly than ever. Rapidly evolving technology, global
markets and climate change all imply significant accelerations to the pace of life – and
these factors are exerting a major impact on our lives. In this wild new world, working
together for the common good may be humanity’s last hope.
■ The author explains this with a wider view, he proceeds to write what could only be
called a giant column about the twenty-first century. According to his thesis: we 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 together.

4. Book Review (Cont.)
■ By way of example, 2007 was the year the iPhone hit shelves, when Twitter reached a
global scale and when Airbnb was created in a San Francisco apartment. Not only that,
but from January 2007 to December 2014, mobile data traffic through AT&T’s national
wireless network rose by over 100,000 percent!
■ In 2007, the technological acceleration described by Moore’s law contributed to, and
coincided with, accelerations in the market, evidenced by increased global commerce,
rapidly growing social networks and an information tsunami. At the same time, mother
nature was experiencing an acceleration in the form of climate change and population
explosions.

5. Book Review (Cont.)
■ So, what does that all mean for life on Earth?
■ Put simply, it means that this is a time of constant adaptation. If prior epochs of history
were characterized by occasional destabilization, the modern world is one of near-
constant destabilization; humans must constantly reevaluate their ecosystem, remaining
agile in order to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

6. Book Review (Cont.)
■ Friedman argues that man is actually a fairly adaptable creature. The problem is that our
capacity to adapt is being outpaced by a “supernova,” built from three ever faster things:
technology, the market and climate change. That sounds like a predictable list, but
Friedman digs cleverly into each one.
■ For instance, on technology he argues convincingly that 2007, which saw the arrival of
the iPhone, Android and Kindle, was the year when software began. He introduces us to
vital bits, like GitHub and Hadoop; he points out that if Moore’s law (that the power of
microchips would double about every two years) had applied to the capabilities of cars,
not computer chips, then the modern descendant of the 1971 Volkswagen Beetle would
travel at 300,000 miles per hour, cost 4 cents and use one tank of gasoline in a lifetime.

7. Book Review (Cont.)
■ For the most part, “Thank You for Being Late” Thank You for Being Late is a work of
contemporary history. It’s also an argument for “being late”–for pausing to appreciate
this amazing historical epoch we’re passing through and to reflect on its possibilities and
dangers.
■ Friedman shows that we can deal with the stresses of an age of accelerations–if we slow
down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine our work, politics, and
community. Thank You for Being Late is Friedman’s most ambitious book–and an
essential guide to the present and surely for the future.

8. Personal views and experiences
■ “When you press the pause button on a machine, it stops. But when you press the pause
button on human being, they start.”
■ Get out there and interact
■ When the author asked Surgeon General Vivek Murthy what the leading disease affecting
Americans is today, he answered immediately, “It’s not cancer. . . not heart disease. It’s
isolation.” Ironically enough, while we’re living in the most technologically networked and
interconnected period in history, we are feeling more isolated than ever. In this environment,
human-to-human interaction is essential to your health. So, put down your smartphone and
strike up a conversation in the real world. When the world is facing a great Pandemic this
book actually teaches to slow down and rethink the actions that we made in the past, the
changes that we want, the mistakes that we will never repeat, how we need to share our space
and try to be more interactive.