Unknown Title

by Unknown Author

Overview

We All Sense It-Something Big is Going On. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can't miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once-and it is dizzying. In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike anything he has attempted before. Thomas k Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts. You will never look at the world the same way again after you read this book: how you understand the news, the work you do, the education your kids need, the investments your employer has to make, and the moral and geopolitical choices our country has to navigate will all be refashioned by Friedman's original analysis. Friedman begins by taking us into his own way of looking at the world-how he writes a column. After a quick tutorial, he proceeds to write what could only be called a giant column about the twenty-first century. His thesis: to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet's three largest forces-Moore's law (technology), the Market (globalization); and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss)-are accelerating all at once. These accelerations are transforming five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community. Why is this happening? As Friedman shows, the exponential increase in computing power defined by Moore's law has a lot to do with it. The year 2007 was a major inflection point: the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new technology platform. Friedman calls this platform "the supernova"- for it is an extraordinary release of energy that is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is creating vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world-or to destroy it. Thank You for Being Late is a work of contemporary history that serves as a field manual for how to write and think about this era of accelerations. It's also an argument for "being late" -for pausing to appreciate this amazing historical epoch we're passing through and to reflect on its' possibilities and dangers. To amplify this point, Friedman revisits his Minnesota hometown in his moving concluding chapters; there, he explores how communities can create a "topsoil of trust" to anchor their increasingly diverse and digital populations. With his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, Friedman shows that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations-if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community. Thank You for Being Late is Friedman's most ambitious book-and an essential guide to the present and the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781375724449
Publisher:	Unknown Publisher
Publication date:	08/20/2017
Pages:	450
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and the prize-winning author of seventeen books, including The Embarrassment of Riches, Citizens, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes, the History of Britain trilogy and The Story of the Jews. He is a contributing editor of the Financial Times and his award-winning television work as writer and presenter for the BBC includes the fifteen-part A History of Britain and the eight-part, Emmy-winning Power of Art.

Read an Excerpt

One

Vish Puri, founder and managing director of Most Private Investigators Ltd., sat alone in a room in a guesthouse in Defence Colony, south Delhi, devouring a dozen green chilli pakoras from a greasy takeaway box.

Puri was supposed to be keeping off the fried foods and Indian desserts he so loved. Dr Mohan had ‘intimated’ to him at his last check-up that he could no longer afford to indulge himself with the usual Punjabi staples.

‘Blood pressure is up, so chance of heart attack and diabetes is there. Don’t do obesity,’ he’d advised.

Puri considered the doctor’s stern warning as he sank his teeth into another hot, crispy pakora and his taste buds thrilled to the tang of salty batter, fiery chilli and the tangy red chutney in which he had drowned the illicit snack. He derived a perverse sense of satisfaction from defying Dr Mohan’s orders.

Still, the fifty-one-year-old detective shuddered to think what his wife would say if she found out he was eating between meals — especially ‘outside’ food that had not been prepared by her own hands (or at least by one of the servants).

Keeping this in mind, he was careful not to get any incriminating grease spots on his clothes. And once he had finished his snack and disposed of the takeaway box, he washed the chutney off his hands and checked beneath his manicured nails and between his teeth for any tell-tale residue. Finally he popped some sonf into his mouth to freshen his breath.

All the while, Puri kept an eye on the house across the way and the street below.

By Delhi standards, it was a quiet and exceptionally clean residential street. Defence Colony’s elitist, upper middle-class residences — army officers, doctors, engineers, babus and the occasional press-wallah — had ensured that their gated community remained free of industry, commerce and the usual human detritus. Residents could take a walk through the well-swept streets or idle in the communal gardens without fear of being hassled by disfigured beggars . . . or having to negotiate their way around arc welders soldering lengths of metal on the pavements . . . or halal butchers slaughtering chickens.

Most of the families in Defence Colony were Punjabi and had arrived in New Delhi as refugees following the catastrophic partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. As their affluence and numbers had grown over the decades, they had built cubist cement villas surrounded by high perimeter walls and imposing wrought iron gates.

Each of these mini-fiefdoms employed an entire company of servants. The residents of number 76, D Block, the house that Puri was watching, retained the services of no fewer than seven full-time people — two drivers, a cook, a cleaner-cum-laundry-maid, a bearer and two security guards. Three of these employees were ‘live-in’ and shared the barsaati on the roof. The overnight security guard slept in the sentry box positioned outside the front gate, though, strictly speaking, he really wasn’t meant to.

The family also relied on a part-time dishwasher, a sweeper, a gardener and the local pressing-wallah who had a stand under the neem tree down the street where he applied a heavy iron filled with hot coals to a dizzying assortment of garments, including silk saris, cotton salwars and denim jeans.

From the vantage point in the room Puri had rented, he could see the dark-skinned cleaner-cum-laundry-maid on the roof of number 76, hanging underwear on the washing line. The mali was on the first-floor balcony watering the potted plants. The sweeper was using up gallons of precious water hosing down the marble forecourt. And, out in the street, the cook was inspecting the green chillis being sold by a local costermonger who pushed a wooden cart through the neighbourhood, periodically calling out, ‘Subzi-wallah! ’

Puri had positioned two of his best undercover operatives, Tubelight and Flush, down in the street.

These were not their real names, of course. Being Punjabi, the detective had nicknames for most of his employees, relatives and close friends. For example, he called his wife Rumpi; his new driver, Handbrake; and the office boy, who was extraordinarily lazy, Door Stop.

…

Puri himself was known by various names.

His father had always addressed him by his full name, Vishwas, which the detective had later shortened to Vish because it rhymes with ‘wish’ (and ‘Vish Puri’ could be taken to mean ‘granter of wishes’). But the rest of his family and friends knew him as Chubby, an affectionate rather than a derisive sobriquet — although as Dr Mohan had pointed out so indelicately, he did need to lose about thirty pounds.

Puri insisted on being called Boss by his employees, which helped remind them who was in charge. In India, it was important to keep a strong chain of command; people were used to hierarchy and they responded to authority. As he was fond of saying, ‘You can’t have every Johnny thinking he’s a Nelson, no?’

The detective reached for his walkie-talkie and spoke into it.

‘What’s that Charlie up to, over?’ he said.

‘Still doing timepass, Boss,’ replied Flush. There was a pause before he remembered to add the requisite ‘over.’

Flush, who was thirty-two, skinny and wore thick, milk-bottle-bottom glasses, was sitting in the back of Puri’s Hindustan Ambassador monitoring the bugs the team had planted inside the target’s home earlier, as well as all incoming and outgoing phone calls. Meanwhile, Tubelight, who was middle aged with henna-dyed hair and blind in one eye, was disguised as an autorickshaw-wallah in oily clothes and rubber chappals. Crouched on his haunches on the side of the street among a group of bidi-smoking local drivers, he was gambling at cards.

Puri, a self-confessed master of disguise, had not changed into anything unusual for today’s operation, though, seeing him for the first time, you might have been forgiven for thinking this was not the case. His military moustache, first grown when he was a recruit in the army, was waxed and curled at the ends. He was wearing one of his trademark tweed Sandown caps, imported from Bates of Jermyn Street in Piccadilly, and a pair of prescription aviator sunglasses.

Now that it was November and the intense heat of summer had subsided, he had also opted for his new grey safari suit. It had been made for him, as all his shirts and suits were, by Mr M. A. Pathan of Connaught Place, whose grandfather had often dressed Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan.

‘A pukka Savile Row finish if ever I saw one,’ said the detective to himself, admiring the cut in a mirror in the empty room. ‘Really tip top.’

The suit was indeed perfectly tailored for his short, tubby frame. The silver buttons with the stag emblems were especially fetching.

Puri sat down in his canvas chair and waited. It was only a matter of time before Ramesh Goel made his move. Everything the detective had learned about the young man suggested that he would not be able to resist temptation.

Table of Contents

Part I Reflecting

1 Thank You for Being Late 3

Part II Accelerating

2 What the Hell Happened in 2007? 19

3 Moore's Law 36

4 The Supernova 85

5 The Market 118

6 Mother Nature 157

Part III Innovating

7 Just Too Damned Fast 187

8 Turning AI into IA 203

9 Control vs. Kaos 244

10 Mother Nature as Political Mentor 298

11 Is God in Cyberspace? 337

12 Always Looking for Minnesota 358

13 You Can Go Home Again (and You Should!) 410

Part IV Anchoring

14 From Minnesota to the World and Back 447

Acknowledgments 455

Index 463

Reading Group Guide

1. Do you see a relationship between the kind of work Marian does in consumer research with the particular way her life begins to disintegrate?

2. Peter is afraid of being captured by a woman, of losing his freedom; Marian begins to feel hunted, caught in his gaze; eventually she even confuses his camera with a gun. In what ways can all the characters seem at once to be hunter then predator, master then slave, subject then object?

3. Two parties take place in the book, the office party and the engagement party. Discuss what these parties do for the structure and development of the novel.

4. Sexual identity lies at the heart of much of the story. Discuss the role Marian's roommate Ainsley, her friend Claire, and finally the "office Virgins" play in helping define Marian's dilemma. Discuss the men: Why is Marian drawn to Duncan? Contrast him with Peter.

5. The novel is narrated in first person in parts one and three, third person in part two. What is the effect on the reader of the change in voice?

6. Margaret Atwood has described The Edible Woman, her first novel, as an "anti-comedy," with themes many now see as proto-feminist. Give examples of Atwood's clever use of food images throughout the book.

7. First Marian drops meat from her diet, then, eggs, vegetables, even pumpkin seeds. Can you point to the incidents that precede each elimination from her diet? How does her lack of appetite compare or contrast with Duncan's unnatural thinness, his stated desire to become "an amoeba?"

8. What is the meaning of the cake Marian serves Peter at the novel's end? What is the significance of her eating the cake?

9. Margaret Atwood is a writer who often plays with fair-tale images in her work. "The Robber Bridegroom" (which she much later turns on its head with The Robber Bride) was likely an inspiration for The Edible Woman: the old crone warns the bride-to-be " . . . the only marriage you'll celebrate will be with death. . . . When they have you in their power they'll chop you up in pieces . . . then they'll cook you and eat you, because they are cannibals." What images of cannibalism does Atwood use? Do you see traces of other fairy tales in this novel?

10. At the time The Edible Woman was written in 1965, food, eating, and weight issues had not yet attracted wide attention as feminist concerns. Three decades later, in The Beauty Myth, author Naomi Wolf observes that the obsession with thinness began to become a serious national problem for women America around 1920, coinciding with women's right to vote; studies indicate that today nearly half of American young women have had at one time or other had an eating disorder. What are the symbolic meanings of food, and why does it become the focus for so much anxiety?

Discussion questions provided courtesy of Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. All rights reserved.

Editorial Reviews

"Splendid, spirited, immensely enjoyable and wide-ranging." —Financial Times on 'The Story of the Jews'

"Shows Schama at his best... as full of memorable incident as a Bellow novel and wittier than a Woody Allen movie." —The Times on 'The Story of the Jews'

"Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict." —Financial Times on 'A History of Britain'

From the Publisher