世界是平的(The World is Plat)感谢koralo朋友为我提供的新书：The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century。这本书讲述了一个美国记者漫游中国、印度等东方国家的故事，他总结出由于信息技术和经济全球化对世界的影响，地球正在变平，机会对世界上所有的国家都是均等的。作者企图从东方迅速发展的丰富资料中唤起美国人的危机意识，并认为新世纪的世界性竞争关键在于教育。作者的观点值得我们借鉴和学习，关心中国教育发展的人们可以认真读一读这本书。
评托马斯L . 弗里德曼的新书<<世界是平的: 21 世纪简史>>
保罗·马格努森(Paul Magnusson)
原文来源: <商务周刊>2005 年4月25 日网络版
中文翻译:科洛
优点: 详尽介绍了技术革命是怎样在加速着全球化的。
不足: 弗里德曼不得不承认现实证据比自由贸易的理论更有说服力。
总评: 是一本关于全球化最棘手的问题的书。
托马斯 L . 弗里德曼在写他的这本新书过程中有灵感突然显现的情况吗? 我想象他在访问班格洛回到华盛顿机场时乘上一位失业软件工程师驾驶的出租车。 在倾听了弗里德曼关于"展平中的地球" –作者为技术驱动全球化的定义-奇迹的描述之后-- 他递上他的求职简历。 "我愿接受任何技术性的工作,"这位高学历出租车司机说 "我已如此绝望。"
当然,这只是我的想像. 不过 <<世界是平的: 21 世纪简史>> 的前半部可算是对人类智慧的优美赞歌, 而后半部则象这个出租汽车司机的故事--充满绝望。
弗里德曼, 纽约时代周刊专栏作家, 对过去15 年期间数字式技术的爆发从全球性角度作了深刻的归纳介绍. 互联网, 搜索引擎, 数字照片, iPods, 电子邮件, PDAs, 浏览器, 文件分享, 无线网络, 及其他多种先进技术不仅控制了经济和工作场所,而且促进着世界政治版图的改观-- 所有这一切都发生在不到一代人的时间内。 变化是如此迅速和强烈, 以至于没有时间跟踪记录变化的过程,更不用说去理解这些变化的涵义了。 弗里德曼说-- 世界是平的, 意思是世界已越来越被互联起来。 这可能会消除贫穷, 壮大全世界的中产阶级, 甚至扩散民主。
得益于有无限制的差旅经费, 弗里德曼访问了遍及美国和亚洲的创新中心, 与从网景(Netscape)共同创立者马克.安德森(Marc Andreessen) 作者到维沃克·保罗(Vivek Paul) 印度软件公司维普罗(Wipro) 的总裁--这类技术见证人交谈 . 他由此作出结论: "技术决定论" 将如查尔斯·达尔文(Charles Darwin) 的自然选择论统治生物学一样主导经济学, 同样这个技术决定论还将决定哪些美国人将保有其工作,哪些则只能眼睁睁看着他们的工作被外包到到班格洛或上海。
而接着读弗里德曼书的后半部分时, 对辉煌技术未来的希望则变得灰暗。 世界的一半-- 非洲, 拉丁美洲大部, 及印度和中国的边远乡村—还根本没有展平。 这些地方贫困, 疾病泛滥, 希望渺茫。 由于他们, 全球化将可能”象一支飞上了天但由于缺乏可持续推力的火箭又迅速落回地球。”
对美国来说,远期后果并不乐观, 弗里德曼描述道: 印度的专业技术学院培养的软件奇才, 中国培养的大量工程师和科学家, 都热情勃勃地以低于美国劳工标准容许的,在本地却足够提供舒适中产阶级生活的薪水工作。 同时, 已破产的美国公司破产前铺设的横跨太平洋的光纤电缆网使得将基于知识的-会计师, 软件工程师, 放射学家, 图例分析师, 新闻工作者(上帝)- 工作送到海外易如反掌。
很奇怪, 弗里德曼是那么想使所有这些美妙技术带来的变化看起来像正面乐观的力量, 当他高论其对美国就业和薪水的作用时, 他说他不断地感悟出:: "李嘉图是对的, 李嘉图是对的,李嘉图是对的。" 弗里德曼在指提出比较优势理论的18 世纪英国的经济学家大卫.李嘉图(David Ricardo), 在理论上, 比较优势理论应充保证美国人一些有意义的工作。
弗里德曼的矛盾心理促使他去拜访华盛顿各主要智囊团, 并随后得出结论: 拯救我们失业的软件工程师的救星是...教育。 弗里德曼的这个答案, 就如肯尼迪 (JFK)当年说为实现登月探险的计划, "是要让所有美国男女进校园学习。" 问题是, 越来越多的科学和工程学博士毕业生是外国人, 他们越来越多地回国去开发我们的软件和设计新的有影响力的程序。
那么, 实际应怎么办呢? 更好的方案之一是薪水保险, 一个在华盛顿已有好一阵子的漂亮观点。 它会提供正寻找新工作的下岗劳动者一年左右的收入补助。 在今天展平的经济环境下, 熟练劳动者找到新工作是可能的, 不过,总的来说-- 收入会少些。 弗里德曼叫这个安全网的扩展为"有情的展平。"
公平的说, 我不会企图错过弗里德曼在<<时代>>发表的每篇专栏文章。 他从不回避最突出和最棘手的问题。 <<世界是平的>>充满虞智。 至少, 我们虚构的下岗(软件工程师)出租车司机能确信他自己并不是独一无二的。
资料来源；
http://koralo.blog-city.com/__1.htm
英文原文：
Globalization Is Great -- Sort Of The Good: A thorough account of how the revolution in technology is accelerating globalization.
The Bad: Friedman is reluctant to trust his evidence rather than the theory of free trade.
The Bottom Line: The book tackles the big questions and the thorniest issues about globalization.
Did Thomas L. Friedman have an epiphany halfway through writing his new book? I imagine him jumping into a taxi at Washington National Airport after a visit to Bangalore and finding a laid-off American software engineer behind the wheel. After listening to Friedman gush about the wonders of a "flattening earth" -- the author's term for technology- driven globalization -- he hands him a résumé. "I'll take just about anything in tech," says the overeducated cabbie. "I'm that desperate."
This is just my imagination, of course. But the first half of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is a feel-good paean to the ingenuity of man, while the second half -- like the story of our taxi driver -- is tinged with despair.
Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, nicely sums up the explosion of digital-technology advances during the past 15 years and places the phenomenon in its global context. Just consider that the Web, search engines, digital photography, iPods, e-mail, PDAs, the browser, file sharing, Wi-Fi, and a dozen other cutting-edge technologies have not only come to dominate economics and the workplace but have also helped reshape the political world -- all in less than a generation. Change has been so rapid and overwhelming that there hasn't been time to keep track of the developments, much less to understand their implications. The world is flattening, Friedman says -- meaning it is increasingly interconnected. This can raise the poor from poverty, nourish a worldwide middle class, and even spread democracy.
Apparently blessed with unlimited travel funds, Friedman visits innovation centers throughout Asia and America, talking to the seers of silicon -- from Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen to Vivek Paul, president of Wipro, the Indian software company -- to discern the meaning of it all. Friedman's conclusion: "Technology determinism" is the force that will rule the economy, just as Charles Darwin's natural selection rules biology. This same technological determinism will also dictate which people in America keep a job and which ones see their work outsourced to Bangalore or Shanghai.
This leads to part two of Friedman's book, wherein hope for a bright technological future goes dim. Half of the world -- Africa, much of Latin America, and rural areas of India and China -- isn't flattening at all. These places are impoverished, disease-ridden, and without prospects. Because of them, globalization could wind up "like a rocket that takes off but quickly falls back to earth for lack of sustained thrust."
The long-term outlook for America isn't so great either, Friedman allows. India's specialized technology institutes are turning out battalions of software wizards. China is producing armies of engineers and scientists. They are all eager to work for wages that would violate labor standards in the U.S. but provide a nice middle-class income in their countries. Meanwhile, the fiber-optic cables that certain American companies obligingly laid across the Pacific Ocean shortly before going bankrupt are making it a snap to send offshore the jobs of accountants, software writers, radiologists, illustrators, journalists (gulp), and just about anyone else whose work is knowledge-based.
Oddly, Friedman so badly wants to see all the nifty techno-change as a positive force that, when he contemplates the effects on American jobs and wages, he says his mind keeps telling him: "Ricardo is right, Ricardo is right, Ricardo is right." Friedman is alluding to David Ricardo, the 18th century British economist who came up with the theory of comparative advantage, which should assure Americans of some kind of meaningful work. In theory.
Friedman's ambivalence prompts him to visit the oracles of the major think tanks of Washington, and he concludes that the savior for our unemployed software engineers is...education. The solution, which Friedman likens to JFK's goal of putting a man on the moon, "is to put every American man and woman on campus." The problem is that more and more PhD grads in the sciences and engineering are foreigners who increasingly return home to write our software and design the next killer app.
So what, realistically, can be done? One of the better solutions is wage insurance, an excellent idea that has been kicking around Washington for a while. It would supply displaced workers starting on a new job with a year or so of income supplement. In today's flattened economy, it's possible for skilled workers to find new jobs, after all -- just not ones that pay as much. Friedman calls this expansion of the safety net "compassionate flattening."
To be fair, I wouldn't think of skipping one of Friedman's op-ed columns in the Times. He never shrinks from the biggest problems and the thorniest issues. The World Is Flat is no less ambitious. At the least, our imaginary laid-off cab driver can reassure himself that he's hardly alone.
参考原文：
http://www.businessweek.com/@@w3opJocQSzKPUREA/magazine/content/05_17/b3930053_mz005.htm
