Globalisation is hardly a new subject for Thomas Friedman, internationally renowned author, New York Times columnist, and recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes.
He first wrote about the concept in 1999, in his second book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalisation. It won an award from the Overseas Press Club of America for best non-fiction book on international affairs. In 2005, his book, The World is Flat, became The New York Times best-seller; it has sold more than four million copies in 37 languages.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded came out in 2009, and this September he launched That Used To Be Us, which was co-written with American foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum.
Friedman believes globalisation has entered every single layer of our lives. 'In 2005, when I wrote The World is Flat, Facebook didn't exist, Twitter was a sound, the Cloud was in the sky, 4G was a parking place, LinkedIn was a prison, applications were what you sent to college and Skype for most people was a typo. All of that has changed in just the past six years,' says the US journalist, 58.
In The World is Flat, Friedman explains how digital connectivity has made the world 'flat' and levelled the global playing field.
'We had the convergence of three technological events. First, the invention of personal computers, which enabled individuals, for the first time in history, to become authors of their own content in digital form; second, the internet and World Wide Web, allowing them to take the content and send it anywhere in the world for free; and last, the revolution in software, which made everybody's computer interoperable.'
And things have not slowed down since.