Thomas Friedman: Three forces affecting the future of humankind

In 2005, a book titled “The World is Flat” made its name around the world, triggering hot debate about globalization. Twelve years later, the author, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas Friedman shared his new perspectives over the relations between technology innovation and globalization at the Center for China and Globalization, a leading independent think tank based in Beijing on June 2, 2017.

On behalf of the audience, CCG President Wang Huiyao extended warm welcome to Friedman, and provided a brief introduction about the speaker’s achievement in the globalization study and advocacy. As a think tank focusing on the study of globalization, CCG invited Friedman to China exchanging his ideas and views with Chinese scholars in order to strengthen the international communication and cooperation and boost the studies of globalization with more strategic and forward thinkings.

In his speech titled “How does science and technology innovation reshape globalization?”  Friedman pointed out three major forces that were changing the world in an unprecedented way, which were the market, Mother Nature and Moore’s Law.

Furthermore, he explained how the Internet popularity and rapid digitalization through the platforms such as WeChat, Twitter, Facebook, PayPal, Amazon and Alibaba expanded and speeded up globalization.

With respect to the Mother Nature, Friedman discussed how climate change, the extinction of biodiversity, and population growth affect individual careers, national economies, and entire civilization.

In 1965, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the Intel, made a prediction that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, which set the pace for the modern digital revolution. Friedman explained that rapid science and technology development is pushing forward digitalization, and the digital advancement, in turn, is speeding up climate change.

As Friedman described, this was how the integration and interaction of these three forces were profoundly reshaping our world, particularly in five areas – politics, geopolitics, ethics, workplace and community. For example, due to the rapid changes in science and technology, President Trump could exert his influence on the whole world with just one Twitter post. However, we needed to be alerted that ISIS could have such an immediate ability over the world as well.

To address people’s concerns on how to be adapted to such a rapidly changing world, Friedman quoted his newly-published book “Thank You for Being Late” to explain it in two areas:

1) Why the world is the way it is and 2) the forces reshaping the world. Eventually, he wanted to assure the audience that it would be ok, even though many things seem to be out of control.

When asked to comment on the US’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, Friedman criticized it as a “breathtakingly stupid” decision. However, he was confident that many US states and local governments would continue to enhance their environmental policies.

Moreover, Friedman also shared his insights about how science and technology development would impact global finance and the quality of life.