"thank you for being late" by Thomas Friedman (Book review )

1. Book Review-1
Name : Vrutant Dhruv
Roll No. :17BCL120
Subject : CS-II

2. Introduction about 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.
• He has been criticized for his staunch advocacy of the Iraq War and unregulated
trade and his early support of Saudi Royal Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

3. Summary
• Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of
Accelerations, readers are taken through a typical globe-spanning Friedmanesque
journey of ideas, insights and, of course, people — many people of a wide variety
of nationalities and perspectives, but all supporting in some way Friedman’s
central theme: The world is speeding up — and that’s okay, as long as we all keep
moving ourselves.
• Friedman compares thriving in today’s world to riding a bicycle: a bike is steady,
upright and comfortable when you are moving; stop moving and you topple over.
The way to keep moving is to embrace collaboration, pluralism, trust of others —
and to not be afraid of change. “So many people today seem to be looking for
someone to put on the brakes, to take a hammer to the forces of change — or
just give them a simple answer to make their anxiety go away,” he writes. “It is
time to redouble our efforts to close that anxiety gap with imagination and
innovation and not scare tactics and simplistic solutions.”

4. • Not that there isn’t good reason for trepidation. As Friedman notes,
the most dangerous period on New York City streets occurred when
cars started appearing but horse-and-buggies had not yet
disappeared. We are currently in a similar transition period, with the
world accelerating at such a rate that humans are having trouble
adapting to the changes.
• In Thank You for Being Late, Friedman explores in detail the three
accelerations driving “the machine” today — the machine being
Friedman’s term for the “world’s biggest gears and pulleys [that] are
shaping events.”
• The first acceleration is in the domain of technology. When visiting
the laboratories of the multinationals driving technology forward,
Friedman writes, he feels a bit like James Bond visiting Q’s laboratory
to discover the latest high-tech spy gadgets.

5. • Except that the mechanical gadgets of Fleming’s hero have been
replaced by what most people refer to as “the cloud” and what
Friedman calls “the supernova.” Beginning in 2007, according to
Friedman, the supernova started launching Moore’s law on the
exponential increase in processing power into the stratosphere.
Friedman uses the example of an information-technology
multinational company based in the surprisingly named town of
Batman, Turkey to exemplify how the supernova empowers
innovators to reach everywhere from anywhere.

6. • The second acceleration concerns globalization, which Friedman calls
“the Market.” The world, according to Friedman, is even flatter than
before. One impact of the acceleration of globalization that Friedman
highlights is “the big shift,” a term coined by management thought
leaders John Hagle III, John Seeley Brown and Lang Davison. The big
shift refers to the core unit of value moving from stocks of knowledge
to flows of knowledge.
• The third acceleration concerns the environment, perhaps the one
area where the reader might sense a bit more trepidation on the part
of Friedman. Humans, he argues, have to adapt, starting now, to the
accelerations of Mother Nature, as summarized in a “boundaries”
report by environmental researchers that shows how the earth is
pushing past boundaries (in carbon dioxide levels, surface
temperature, tropical forest loss, etc.) never before breached.

7. Critics
• It is said that in his later years, Mark Twain became increasingly bitter.
Friedman, in contrast, remains steadfastly optimistic — it is no
accident that the subtitle of Thank You for Being Late declares that
this is an “optimist’s guide.” As for the enigmatic title of the book, it
comes from Friedman’s realization that he didn’t mind if interview
subjects arrived late. Their tardiness gave him “found” time in which
he could simply reflect on the world around him. Given the
illuminating insights and explorations in this book that emerged from
such reflection, readers will be equally grateful that even in the age of
accelerations there are some things that continue to slow people
down.