Thomas Friedman, Private Eye

I thought I’d share a little of what I wrote on Sparky’s List about this week’s toon:

Well, it’s always fun doing a Thomas Friedman cartoon.  This one was inspired by the full page ad in the New York Times last weekend for the Times-sponsored GLOBAL FORUM: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN’S THE NEXT NEW WORLD!  And I quote:
 
AGENDA ITEMS WILL INCLUDE:
* The World We Live in Now
* Threats or Possibilities
* What Happened to Power?
* How the Digital Revolution
Is Accelerating Everything
* What You Don’t Know Is Coming
* Doing Business in the Next New World
* What an Education Is Going to Mean
* What Energy Is Going to Be
 
Tickets to this daylong festival of Deep Insight are $495 and available only after one requests an invitation.  The video posted on the forum website contains these nuggests of wisdom:
 
While we were sleeping, something really big happened over the last decade. While we were focused on post 9/11 and the subprime crisis, something really big happened in the plumbing of the world and by the plumbing I mean, basically, the technological platform on which innovation and education and companies all rest. So back in 2004 I wrote a book called The World Is Flat, and the argument of the book is that the world was getting connected. Well, I would argue that in the last 10 years, while you were sleeping the world went from connected to hyperconnected.
 
Get it? We used to be sorta connected, but now we’re really, really connected!  These kids today, with their gadgets and their Facebook!  And it all happened while you were asleep and focused on world events, in your sleep.

As Wonkette notes, he’s been pushing this latest buzzword — “hyperconnectivity” — hard.  And you have to give him this: he’s nothing if not relentless.  When he writes a book about the world being flat, or short, or dusty or some damn thing, you can count on seeing that metaphor worked into successive columns for years.

BONUS Friedman follies: here and here.