Thomas L Friedman’s 2005 book title “The world is flat” is too good to be true. He insisits that a level playing field is being offered by the forces of globalization. In his article for NYT he quoted as oen of the exmaples where InfoSys can access its global supply chain within a video conferencing room and threatening to provide every service in Bangalore for a customer in USA. Further, he well describes Gloablization 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.
Quoting Marc Andersson of Napster he is too excited to mention the power of nfomation access and usage by everyone having a laptop : “Andreessen is touching on the most exciting part of Globalization 3.0 and the flattening of the world: the fact that we are now in the process of connecting all the knowledge pools in the world together. We’ve tasted some of the downsides of that in the way that Osama bin Laden has connected terrorist knowledge pools together through his Qaeda network, not to mention the work of teenage hackers spinning off more and more lethal computer viruses that affect us all. But the upside is that by connecting all these knowledge pools we are on the cusp of an incredible new era of innovation, an era that will be driven from left field and right field, from West and East and from North and South. Only 30 years ago, if you had a choice of being born a B student in Boston or a genius in Bangalore or Beijing, you probably would have chosen Boston, because a genius in Beijing or Bangalore could not really take advantage of his or her talent. They could not plug and play globally. Not anymore. Not when the world is flat, and anyone with smarts, access to Google and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray.
When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids. “
This is the point where i think he goes wrong by oversimplifying. Globalization is enforcing appropriability and IPR regimes as well. Sharing what level and type of content or knowledge is important. The access to core technological and design knowledge is being restricted and controlled tightly as a natural requirement for the market forces because knowledge has the characteristics of a public good. At an individual level yes it may spur some process or incremental innovation but radical innovation (the very desirable incentive and output for entreprenuership) is being locked by national, international and regional regimes.
source: http://www.globalcultures.net/worldblog/
If the world is flat then, it is a multi level/storey world where nations are at differenet flat levels needing ladders to climb up to higher levels.
In, ”Kicking away the ladder” 2002, Ha Joon Chang has preseneted this vew of globalization where advanced nations having used inteventionist regimes are now opening it up and promoting free market so that laggrds cannot climb up.
On top of that in my opinion the biggest kick to these ladders (including access to knowledge) is opening up markets yet strengthening the IPR regimes. This way the followers markets can be accessed but they cannot access the knowledge necessary to make use of their increased access to advanced markets. Obviusoly, I am not talking of your individual access to Wikipedia and Google. 
Who do you beleive and agree with is your prerogative…. I go for Ha Joon… 
I felt Ha-Joon Chang’s book made lot more sense than Friedman’s did, mainly because the latter only concentrates on technology, and how that has resulted in a “flattened world. But, surely there is more to globalziation than just technology! And there are people who are poor, disenfranchised and uneducated and living in rural areas – all of whom do not appear in Friedman’s book. It is all his “friends,” who are the corporate boses, whether they be in US or in India that he talks about! And ofcourse the privileged few who have been fortunate enough to get educated in science and technology. But for all the above poor people, the so-called benefits of globalization simply by-passed them.
Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel winner for economics and was Chief Economist at World Bank) said while on a trip to India, that 600 million people from India (out of the one billion!) have been left out of the “development” fold of globalization. So, obviously, all India is not going to migrate into middle class, if anything the inequality is far, far worse now, after the advent of globalization.
Similarly newspaper reports have pointed out how Chinese workers are working in apalling conditions, to churn out the low cost products, with poor pay, cramped rooms, no accident or health insurance benefits, no job security, no overtime, long working hours.
There is an other small, but interesting book I would recommend reading, by Aronica and Ramdoo, “The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller,” which offers a counterperspective to Friedman’s theory on globalization. It is a small book compared to the 600 page tome by Friedman, and aimed at the common man and students alike. As popular as the book may be, some reviewers assert that by what it leaves out, Friedman’s book is dangerous. The authors point to the fact that there isn’t a single table or data footnote in Friedman’s entire book.
“Globalization is the greatest reorganization of the world since the Industrial Revolution,” says Aronica.
You may want to see http://www.mkpress.com/flat
and watch http://www.mkpress.com/flatoverview.html
for an interesting counterperspective on Friedman’s
“The World is Flat”.
Also a really interesting 6 min wake-up call: Shift Happens! http://www.mkpress.com/ShiftExtreme.html
There is also a companion book listed: Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation
http://www.mkpress.com/extreme
http://www.mkpress.com/Extreme11minWMV.html