Speaking of changing everything: As you ponder Tom Friedman’s hyper-bestsellling flat-world hypothesis, claiming the end of American economic prowess by mid-afternoon tomorrow, you might think about stopping at the newsstand and grabbing a copy of this month’s (October) Atlantic. There’s an interesting short piece titled “The World Is Spiky: Globalization has changed the playing field, but hasn’t leveled it.” The keynote is fascinating graphics on such things as light emissions (apparently an unparalleled surrogate for true economic activity), patents and scientific citations. While China and India are clearly on the move, it ain’t exactly a race yet. U.S. dominance (with Western Europe and Japan as effective runner-ups) can only be described as staggering. I am a firm believer in the fact/and preacher of the fact that we pretty much need to change pretty much everything to accommodate new players and new technologies (see my reading list above). But “the end of the world as we know it is nigh” is alarmist.
