underlying message of everything that I had seen and heard in Bangalore in two weeks
of filming. The global competitive playing field was being leveled. The world was
being flattened.
As I came to this realization, I was filled with both excitement and dread. The
journalist in me was excited at having found a framework to better understand the
morning headlines and to explain what was happening in the world today. Clearly, it
is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time
with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners
of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history
of the world-using computers, e-mail, networks, teleconferencing, and dynamic new
software. That is what Nandan was telling me. That was what I discovered on my journey
to India and beyond. And that is what this book is about. When you start to think
of the world as flat, a lot of things make sense in ways they did not before. But
I was also excited personally, because what the flattening of the world means is that
we are now connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single
global network, which-if politics and terrorism do not get in the way-could usher
in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation.
But contemplating the flat world also left me filled with dread, professional and
personal. My personal dread derived from the obvious fact that it's not only the
software writers and computer geeks who get empowered to collaborate on work in a
flat world. It's also al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks. The playing field is
not being leveled only in ways that draw in and superempower a whole new group of
innovators. It's being leveled in a way that draws in and superempowers a whole new
group of angry, frustrated, and humiliated men and women.