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. Â 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! Â And I quote:
Â
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
Â
Tickets to this daylong festival of Deep Insight are $495 and available only after one requests an invitation. Â The video posted on the forum website contains these nuggests of wisdom:
Â
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.
Â
Get it? We used to be sorta connected, but now we’re really, really connected! Â These kids today, with their gadgets and their Facebook! Â 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. Â And you have to give him this: he’s nothing if not relentless. Â 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.