The World is Flat: The Great Sorting Out questions

1. Friction and boundaries that divide nation-states are disappearing, and thus will pose a sharper challenge to them and to particular cultures, values, national identities, democratic traditions, and bonds of restraint that have previously provided protection for workers and communities. Some people will welcome the disappearance of the boundaries as an opportunity to expand in any direction with a new set of tools. Others will not welcome the disappearance of boundaries and will feel like they are in a free fall with nothing to hold them up and nothing to protect their privacy. Some will feel liberated while others will feel disoriented. It will become stressful to societies to undergo change. Networks can also spread rumors, such as the one that supposedly told Jews not to go to work at the World Trade Center on 9/11. One question that arises is whose values will govern a particular company and whose interests will that company respect and promote? Global companies will have to undergo much adaptation. When a corporation has operations in different countries around the world, it is hard to tell which country the corporation is associated with. For example, IBM has headquarters in the United States, China, and Japan, and the CEOs are from these countries as well. So is it a Chinese company, a Japanese company, or an American company? The impact on American citizens is that corporate America has done very well by aligning itself with the flat world. The bad part about this is when America sends jobs overseas, the person who did the job over here will either have to move to another country or will have to find a new job. And as more and more jobs are being sent overseas, the harder it is to find the same type job in America that utilizes your skills. One example of a legal ramification is India vs. Indiana. An Indian consulting firm won the contract to upgrade the unemployment department of the state of Indiana. Indiana was outsourcing the very department that would cushion the people of Indiana from the effects of outsourcing. This became a campaign issue for the Republicans and Democrats.

2. When Friedman discusses "Multiple Identity Disorder" he means that the tensions among our identities as consumers, employees, citizens, taxpayers, and shareholders are going to come into conflict. The conflict is between customer and worker, with the company in the middle. When you take out the middleman of business and totally flattened the supply chain, you also take a certain element of humanity out of life. As consumers we want the cheapest drugs that the global supply chain can give us, but as citizens we want and need the government to oversee and regulate the supply chain, even if it means preserving or adding friction.