"The World is Flat" by Thomas Freidman

[james]

Jim has made a couple of postings recently about the reach of the Internet, FB and Mary G's Bakery -- and how he ended up teaching bread classes to student from New Zealand. Put differently, you have an American living in Italy, helping anyone who speaks English make an Italian oven, who has a friend and partner in Canada who teaches baking classes to a New Zealander whom he met through FB.com, who will install an Italian oven in her house when she returns home. What a kick.

On that topic, I am reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Freidman, and I think it is excellent. He describes how we have all become interconnected and what it means to business, products, jobs, the environment, our kids, etc. Our daughters will be living in a very different world than the one I grew up in.

The tone of the book is pretty optimistic, though you have be sure that you (and your kids) find yourselves on the right side of the globalization trend. In the wine business, the new world wines are Australia, New Zealand, Chile, America, etc., and the old world wines are Italy, France and Spain. Now there is a new, new world.

James