In 2005, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman captured the attention of scholars and politicians with his metaphor “The world is flat.” which contradicts the well-known Columbus’s round world theory. The metaphor suggests that globalization driven by technology advances has shrunk our world significantly with the emergence of a global, wired, and leveled intellectual platform (Friedman 2). In his political science book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, he integrates and analyzes interviews and anecdotes from his travels and statistic research. This award-winning book stirred up debates about globalization’s effects on shaping economic geographies. Some writers support his idea and express concerns about rapid expanding phenomena, the others point out that Friedman has overstated the level of connectivity and collaboration, warning policymakers that it is not only ineffective but even dangerous to create policies based on Friedman’s …show more content…
He approaches the arguments of Nandan Nilekani, one of the professionals Friedman cited, from a different prospective. Instead of intellects and capitals flow freely across borders, he points out that none of the industries were free from political and geographic constraints. Firms like Google had to hired local engineers and set up local offices in Russia in order to compete with Russian local engines due to language barriers and difficulties responding to market behaviors (Ghemawat 58). The effect of globalization cannot offset that of the borders between countries. The borders still define and restrain our activities. Given the fact that integration has fallen into stagnation and reversal in the past few years, Ghemawat further suggests that we might have to admit that globalization may be incompatible with national sovereignty (Ghemawat