Thank You for Being Late
by Thomas Friedman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

If you’re flailing while trying to keep up with a world changing at warp speed, Thomas Friedman’s book may provide the pause you need. Thank You for Being Late sees him stepping off the merry-go-round to consider the Age of Accelerations. This is a turning point in history, he argues, in which our ability to adapt is being overtaken by three main forces interacting and accelerating at the same time. Those are Moore’s law, which says computer power doubles every two years; the market (globalisation); and Mother Nature (climate change). Mixing interviews with people from various levels of society (an Ethiopian parking attendant helped spark the idea for the book), Friedman grapples with overarching changes in ethics, the workplace, politics and so on, and points to 2007 as the inflection point. That pivotal year, he reminds us, brought, among other things, the iPhone, the Kindle and Airbnb – companies and innovations that reshaped how we and machines think, create and collaborate. Those who feel technology is leaving them behind should read the book. What is the solution? “Consciously choose to mimic Mother Nature’s killer apps for producing resilience and propulsion.”