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It's a great humiliation to me ... to take off my shirt and my pants and turn around

and all the girls are standing there." It is one reason, he said, that all Palestinian

young people today are just suicide bombers in waiting. He called them "martyrs in

waiting," while his two friends nodded in assent. They warned me that if Israel tried

to kill Yasser Arafat, who was then still alive (and was a leader who knew how to

stimulate only memories, not dreams), they would turn the whole area into a living

"hell." To underscore this point, Motev took out his wallet and showed me a picture

of Arafat. But what caught my eye was the picture of a young girl next to it.

"Who's that?" I asked. That was his girlfriend, he explained, slightly red-faced.

So there was his wallet-Yasser Arafat on one page, whom he was ready to die for, and

his girlfriend on the other, whom he wanted to live for. A few minutes later, one

of his colleagues, Anas Assaf, became emotional. He was the only one in college, an

engineering student at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah. After breathing fire about

also being willing to die for Arafat, he began waxing eloquent about how much he wanted

to go to the University of Memphis, where his uncle lived, "to study engineering."

Unfortunately, he said, he could not get a visa into the United States now. Like his

colleague, Assaf was ready to die for Yasser Arafat, but he wanted to live for the

University of Memphis.

These were good young men, not terrorists. But their role models were all angry men,

and these young men spent a lot of their time imagining how to unleash their anger,

not realizing their potential. Abraham George, by contrast, produced a different

context and a different set of teacher role models for those untouchable children

in his school, and together they planted in his students the seeds of a very different

imagination. We must have more Abraham Georges-everywhere-by the thousands: people

who gaze upon a classroom of untouchable kids and

468

not only see the greatness in each of them but, more important, get them to see the

greatness in themselves while endowing them with the tools to bring that out.

After our little typing race at the Shanti Bhavan school, I went around the classroom

and asked all the children-most of whom had been in school, and out of a life of open

sewers, for only three years-what they wanted to be when they grew up. These were

eight-year-old Indian kids whose parents were untouchables. It was one of the most

moving experiences of my life. Their answers were as follows: "an astronaut," "a

doctor," "a pediatrician," "a poetess," "physics and chemistry," "a scientist and

an astronaut," "a surgeon," "a detective," "an author."

All dreamers in action-not martyrs in waiting.

Let me close with one last point. My own daughter went off to college in the fall

of 2004, and my wife and I dropped her off on a warm September day. The sun was shining.

Our daughter was full of excitement. But I can honestly say it was one of the saddest

days of my life. And it wasn't just the

dad-and-mom-dropping-their-eldest-child-off-at-school thing. No, something else

bothered me. It was the sense that I was dropping my daughter off into a world that

was so much more dangerous than the one she had been born into. I felt like I could

still promise my daughter her bedroom back, but I couldn't promise her the world-not

in the carefree way that I had explored it when I was her age. That really bothered

me. Still does.

The flattening of the world, as I have tried to demonstrate in this book, has presented

us with new opportunities, new challenges, new partners but also, alas, new dangers,

particularly as Americans. It is imperative that we find the right balance among all

of these. It is imperative that we be the best global citizens that we can be-because

in a flat world, if you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it might visit you. And it

is imperative that while we remain vigilant to the new threats, we do not let them

paralyze us. Most of all, though, it is imperative that we nurture more people with

the imaginations of Abraham George and Fadi Ghandour. The more people with the

imagination of 11/9, the better

chance we have of staving off another 9/11.1 refuse to settle for a world that gets

smaller in the wrong sense, in the sense that there are fewer and fewer places an

American can go without a second thought and fewer and fewer foreigners feeling

comfortable about coming to America.

To put it another way, the two greatest dangers we Americans face are an excess of

protectionism-excessive fears of another 9/11 that prompt us to wall ourselves in,

in search of personal security-and excessive fears of competing in a world of 11/9

that prompt us to wall ourselves off, in search of economic security. Both would be

a disaster for us and for the world. Yes, economic competition in the flat world will

be more equal and more intense. We Americans will have to work harder, run faster,

and become smarter to make sure we get our share. But let us not underestimate our

strengths or the innovation that could explode from the flat world when we really

do connect all of the knowledge centers together. On such a flat earth, the most

important attribute you can have is creative imagination-the ability to be the first

on your block to figure out how all these enabling tools can be put together in new

and exciting ways to create products, communities, opportunities, and profits. That

has always been America's strength, because America was, and for now still is, the

world's greatest dream machine.

I cannot tell any other society or culture what to say to its own children, but I

can tell you what I say to my own: The world is being flattened. I didn't start it

and you can't stop it, except at a great cost to human development and your own future.

But we can manage it, for better or for worse. If it is to be for better, not for

worse, then you and your generation must not live in fear of either the terrorists

or of tomorrow, of either al-Qaeda or of Infosys. You can flourish in this flat world,

but it does take the right imagination and the right motivation. While your lives

have been powerfully shaped by 9/11, the world needs you to be forever the generation

of 11/9-the generation of strategic optimists, the generation with more dreams than

memories, the generation that wakes up each morning and not only imagines that things

can be better but also acts on that imagination every day.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In 1999 I published a book on globalization called The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The

phenomenon we call globalization was just taking off then, and The Lexus and the Olive

Tree was one of the early attempts to put a frame around it. This book is not meant

to replace The Lexus and the Olive Tree, but rather to build on it and push the

arguments forward as the world has evolved.

I am deeply grateful to the publisher of The New York Times and chairman of the New

York Times Company, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., for granting me a leave of absence to be

able to undertake this book, and to Gail Collins, editorial page editor of The New

York Times, for supporting that leave and this whole project. It is a privilege to

work for such a great newspaper. It was Arthur and Gail who pushed me to try my hand

at documentaries for the Discovery Times Channel, which took me to India and

stimulated this whole book. Thanks in that regard also go to Billy Campbell of the

Discovery Channel for his enthusiastic backing of that Indian documentary, and to

Ken Levis, Ann Deny, and Stephen Reverand for helping to bring it off. Without

Discovery the show would not have happened.

I never could have written this book, though, without some wonderful tutors from the

worlds of technology, business, and politics. A few individuals must be singled out

for particular thanks. I never would have broken the code of the flat world without

the help of Nandan Nilekani, CEO of the Indian technology company Infosys, who was

the first to point out to me how the playing field was being leveled. Vivek Paul,

pres-

ident of the Indian technology company Wipro, really took me inside the business of

the flat world and deciphered it all for me-time and time again. Joel Cawley, the

head of IBM's strategic planning team, helped me connect so many of the dots between

technology and business and politics on Planet Flat-connections I never would have

made without him. Craig Mundie, chief technology officer of Microsoft, walked me

through the technological evolutions that made the flat world possible and helped

ensure that in writing about them I would not fall flat on my face. He was a tireless

and demanding tutor. Paul Romer, the Stanford University economist who has done so

much good work on the new economy, took the time to read the book in draft and brought

both his humanity and his intellect to several chapters. Marc Andreessen, one of the

cofounders of Netscape; Michael Dell of Dell Inc.; Sir John Rose, chairman of

Rolls-Royce; and Bill Gates of Microsoft were very generous in commenting on certain

sections. My inventor friend Dan Simpkins was enormously helpful in walking this

novice through his complex universe. Michael Sandel's always challenging questions

stimulated me to write a whole chapter-"The Great Sorting Out." And Yaron Ezrahi,

for the fourth book in a row, let me bounce countless ideas off his razor-sharp mind.

The same was true for David Rothkopf. None of them is responsible for any mistakes,

only for insights. I am truly in their debt.

So many other people shared with me their valuable time and commented on different

parts of this book. I want to thank in particular Allen Adamson, Graham Allison, Alex

and Jocelyn Attal, Jim Barksdale, Craig Barrett, Brian Behlendorf, Katie Belding,

Jagdish Bhagwati, Sergey Brin, Brill Brody, Mitchell Caplan, Bill Carrico, John

Chambers, Nayan Chanda, Alan Cohen, Maureen Conway, Lamees El-Hadidy, Rahm Emanuel,

Mike Eskew, Judy Estrin, Diana Farrell, Joel Finkelstein, Carly Fiorina, Frank

Fukuyama, Jeff Garten, Fadi Ghandour, Bill Greer, Jill Greer, Ken Greer, Promod Haque,

Steve Holmes, Dan Honig, Scott Hyten, Shirley Ann Jackson, P. V. Kannan, Alan Kotz,

Gary and Laura Lauder, Robert Lawrence, Jerry Lehrman, Rick Levin, Joshua Levine,

Will Marshall, Walt Mossberg, Moises Nairn, David Neeleman, Larry Page, Jim Perkowski,

Thomas Pickering, Jamie Popkin, Clyde Prestowitz, Glenn Prickett, Saritha Rai, Jerry

Rao, Rajesh Rao, Amartya

Sen, Eric Schmidt, Terry Semel, H. Lee Scott Jr., Dinakar Singh, Larry Summers, Jeff

Uhlin, Atul Vashistha, Philip Verleger Jr., William Wertz, Meg Whitman, Irving

Wladawsky-Berger, Bob Wright, Jerry Yang, and Ernesto Zedillo.

And special thanks to my soul mates and constant intellectual companions Michael

Mandelbaum and Stephen P. Cohen. Sharing ideas with them is one of the joys of my

life. A special thanks too to John Doerr and Herbert Allen Jr., who each gave me the

opportunity to road test this book on some of their very demanding and critical

colleagues.

As always, my wife, Ann, was my first editor, critic, and all-around supporter.

Without her help and intellectual input this book never would have happened. I am

so lucky to have her as my partner. And thanks too to my daughters Orly and Natalie

for putting up with another year of Dad closeted away in his office for long hours,

and to my dear mother, Margaret Friedman, for asking every day when my book would

be done. Max and Eli Bucksbaum provided valuable encouragement in the early hours

of the morning in Aspen. And my sisters Shelley and Jane have always been in my corner.

I am blessed to have had the same literary agent, Esther Newberg, and publisher,

Jonathan Galassi, for four books, and the same line editor, Paul Elie, for the last

three. They are simply the best in the business. I am also blessed to have the most

talented and loyal assistant, Maya Gorman.

This book is dedicated to three very special people in my life: My mother- and

father-in-law, Matt and Kay Bucksbaum, and my oldest childhood friend, Ron Soskin.

INDEX

Abell, Pete, 130

Abizaid, Gen. John, 39

Abdul Kalam,A.P.J., 458

Accenture Ltd., 34, 205

accounting, 11-15, 80, 166,184

Adamson, Allen, 180

adaptability, 239-43, 249

Addison, Craig, 423

Adobe Photoshop, 98, 188, 241

Afghanistan, 55, 396,401, 423, 434-35; bin

Laden in, 448,450; U.S. invasion of, 198,

386-87,458 AFL-CIO, 222 Africa, 182, 315, 317,376, 377, 389, 398,412;

disease in, 377-81 African-Americans, 254, 304-5,403 Agere, 417 agriculture, 288-89;

environmental issues and,297-99

AIDS, see HIV-AIDS Airborne Express, 345-48 Airbus Industries, 196 Airman Flight

School, 445 Airspace, 167 Akbar, M. J., 457 al-Arabiya news channel, 406 al-Jazeera

television network, 400 al-Qaeda, 8, 387, 392-95, 429-35, 437,

444_45,447,456,457,464,469 Al-Rashed, Abdel Rahman, 406 al-Shehhi, Marwan, 395

Al-Sudairi, Turki, 327 al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab, 402 al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 394, 396-97,445,

448 Alexa.com, 94 Ali, Al Abdul Aziz, 444

Allen, Jay, 132

Allison, Graham, 437

Alps, 416

Amazon.com, 65, 68, 98, 102, 156, 242

Amazon rain forests, 412

ambition, 260-65

American Airlines Flight 11, 449

American Association for the Advancement of

Science, 253

American Express, 6, 173, 426 American Indians, 108 American Revolution, 460 America

Online (AOL), 26, 53, 56, 63, 78,

212,278,432 Amin, Idi, 328 AMR Research, 130 anchored jobs, 238-39 Andreessen, Marc,

58-62, 70, 83, 85, 86,

231-32 Angola, 321 Annunziata, Robert, 67 anti-Americanism, 385-87 antiglobalization

movement, 384, 387 Apache, 82-91,96, 103 Apple, 59, 235,463; Macintosh, 59, 61 Arab

Human Development Report, 398, 401 Arabs, 9, 292, 316-17, 326-28, 392-406,456,

461,463-64,466 Arafat, Yasser, 467 Aramex, 345-50,463-64 ARC Electronics, 66