The World is Flat
The World is Flat. Now here's a book about the way the world is changing that really challenges me, makes me think, "What an amazing time God has placed us in." Thomas L. Friedman, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist with The New York Times has been sitting around thinking about what he calls the "The Triple Convergence." Here's the quote from page 181 of the book that sums it up:
"It is this triple convergence--of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration --that I believe is the most important force shaping global economies and politics in the early twenty-first century. Giving so many people access to all these tools of collaboration, along with the ability through search engines and the Web to access billions of pages of raw information, ensures that the next generation of innovations will come from all over Planet Flat. The scale of the global community that is soon going to be able to participate in all sorts of discovery and innovation is something the world has simply never seen before."
There is a unique challenge in this period of time, a challenge to respond to the needs of an emerging world in both the material and spiritual planes. His conclusion is an appeal to the imagination, that we must imagine new partnerships and new collaborations in order to maximize the innovative possibilities. Something about Freidman's tone in all this collided with Brian McClaren's book The Last Word and the Word After That that also finished a few days ago. Both books are calls to action on behalf of the world, calling for fresh thinking, fresh commitment to action, fresh creation. Freidman's is largely a pragmatic appeal, though he seems to care deeply about what's happening to individuals in the developing nations. McClaren's appeal is on behalf of the Christ.
All I know is that, again, it feels like it's time to wake up and watch in wonder at what God is doing...
...and figure out how to take part.
1:49:16 PM
