|
80db65c
|
In Syria, the Obama administration has constantly wrestled with a fiendishly difficult question: Should America and its allies work to take out the murderous Syrian president Bashar al-Assad first--in which case they would lose the support of Iran and Russia and likely introduce even more near-term disorder into Syria? Or should it take out ISIS first--with the tacit support of Iran and Russia--and allow Assad to stay in power, containing t..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
1dc2065
|
Innovation," Teller said, "is a cycle of experimenting, learning, applying knowledge, and then assessing success or failure."
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
080cd3a
|
As I watched the 2016 presidential campaign unfold, the words of Marie Curie never rang more true to me or felt more relevant: "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
5b63534
|
And since computing and storage power had exploded in 2007, the capacity to do so was suddenly there. It led IBM to a fundamental insight: "Every time we got rid of a linguist, our accuracy went up," said Gil. "So now all we use are statistical algorithms" that can compare massive amounts of texts for repeatable patterns. "We have no problem now translating Urdu into Chinese even if no one on our team knows Urdu or Chinese. Now you train th..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
e34dbab
|
When the Web emerged, companies, led by Yahoo, started to organize it for consumers. Yahoo began as a directory of directories. Anytime someone put up a new website, Yahoo would add it to its directory, and then it started breaking websites down into groups--finance, news, sports, business, entertainment, et cetera. "And then search came along," said Cutting, "and Web search engines, like AltaVista, started cropping up."
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
0fc1e87
|
When you are a reporter, your focus is on digging up facts to explain the visible and the complex and to unearth and expose the impenetrable and the hidden--wherever that takes you. You are there to inform, without fear or favor. Straight news often has enormous influence, but it's always in direct proportion to how much it informs, exposes, and explains. Opinion writing is different. When you are a columnist, or a blogger in Bojia's case, ..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
231ec47
|
it was not yet true what Dorothy Boyd, the secretary played by Renee Zellweger in the movie Jerry Maguire, tells her son about flying first-class: "It used to be a better meal, now it's a better life." I grew up in a time and place where the word "public" had deep resonance and engendered the highest respect as a source of innovation--as in public schools, public parks, public deliberations, and public-private partnerships. I grew up at a t..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
17baa1e
|
And it is not just knowledge that is improved by pausing. So, too, is the ability to build trust, "to form deeper and better connections, not just fast ones, with other human beings," adds Seidman. "Our ability to forge deep relationships--to love, to care, to hope, to trust, and to build voluntary communities based on shared values--is one of the most uniquely human capacities we have."
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
fbe1c56
|
In his sobering book Sabbath, the minister and author Wayne Muller observes how often people say to him, "I am so busy." "We say this to one another with no small degree of pride," Muller writes, "as if our exhaustion were a trophy, our ability to withstand stress a mark of real character ... To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know when the sun has set at all), to whiz through o..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
ac917af
|
Sometimes the wings come off the plane," said Mayor Jacobs, "but people will accept that--if they think you're trying to get to outer space. We were trying to do the right thing. The community was extraordinarily accepting of that. If you are terrified all the time of being excoriated in the press for some minor screwup, well, I have news for you, all progress happens in fits and starts ... The space project would never have happened after ..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
bddd6f3
|
When you press the pause button on a machine, it stops. But when you press the pause button on human beings they start," argues my friend and teacher Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN, which advises global businesses on ethics and leadership. "You start to reflect, you start to rethink your assumptions, you start to reimagine what is possible and, most importantly, you start to reconnect with your most deeply held beliefs. Once you've done that, you ..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
764973e
|
When you are a reporter, your focus is on digging up facts to explain the visible and the complex and to unearth and expose the impenetrable and the hidden--wherever that takes you. You are there to inform, without fear or favor. Straight news often has enormous influence, but it's always in direct proportion to how much it informs, exposes, and explains. Opinion writing is different. When you are a columnist, or a blogger in Bojia's case, ..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
2805ec8
|
Dov Seidman likes to remind me of the Talmudic saying "What comes from the heart enters the heart." What doesn't come from your heart will never enter someone else's heart. It takes caring to ignite caring; it takes empathy to ignite empathy. You also can't have an effective column without some "take" on the biggest forces shaping the world in which we live and how to influence them."
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
74b8dac
|
Qualcomm is putting these sensor clips on all forty-eight buildings in San Diego. Suddenly the building maintenance guys "got converted to data engineers, which is exciting for them," added Tipirneni. They made sure the data was "distilled in a way that is easy for them to understand and be actionable. In the old days, when a facilities manager looked at a building, he would say: "If there is a leak someone will call me or I will see it." T..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
a7fb134
|
Indeed, as the world becomes more interdependent and complex, it becomes more vital than ever to widen your aperture and to synthesize more perspectives. My
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
dad16a7
|
box,
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
79f6312
|
But here is a confession, which I also happily shared with him at our last meeting, which happened as I was completing this book: I had never thought this deeply about my own craft and what makes a column work until our chance encounter prompted me to do so. Had I not paused to engage him, I never would have taken apart, examined, and then reassembled my own framework for making sense of the world in a period of rapid change. Not
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
64b4bea
|
But the question that tugged at me, and I asked over and over was: What was that "it" that was being sustained? I needed to know because I wanted to bottle "it" and share "it." Nothing, it seemed to me, would be more useful in this age of accelerations. Having returned home to reconstruct what had worked in the past to make my community an inclusive place that could anchor and propel many of its citizens, I wanted to understand what was sti..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
cbabe7d
|
Humphrey famously declared: "My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are one hundred seventy-two years late. To those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." It"
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
64b7853
|
Before taking out my blank sheet of paper, though, I did one vitally important thing: I looked for a mentor. I asked myself, who is the "person" with the most experience absorbing climate changes and retaining resilience and continuing to flourish? The answer came easily: I know a woman who has been doing that for about 3.8 billion years. Her name is Mother Nature. I"
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
2cacc20
|
The resulting article--an almost hour-by-hour reconstruction of the massacre--was published across four full pages of The New York Times on September 26, 1982; it eventually won me a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
a48960d
|
Everyone goes into journalism for different reasons--and they're often idealistic ones.
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
f39d40f
|
It is fun to be around really, really creative makers in the second half of the chessboard, to see what they can do, as individuals, with all of the empowering tools that have been enabled by the supernova. I met Tom Wujec in San Francisco at an event at the Exploratorium. We thought we had a lot in common and agreed to follow up on a Skype call. Wujec is a fellow at Autodesk and a global leader in 3-D design, engineering, and entertainment..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
036c261
|
this is a real double blow. It is akin to having your life-long hero, the person around whom you have modeled your whole identity, tell you that you are a fraud--but don't take it personally.
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
87c773e
|
Launched Real Time Talent, one of the most innovative workforce development initiatives in the country. It links the curriculum and training for more than four hundred thousand postsecondary students with the skill requirements of employers in the state (RealTimeTalentMN.org). * Created the Business Bridge, which facilitates connections between the procurement functions of large corporations and smaller potential suppliers located in the re..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
fcdb1b3
|
Claire Cain Miller pointed out that "for all the jobs that machines can now do--whether performing surgery, driving cars or serving food--they still lack one distinctly human trait. They have no social skills. Yet skills like cooperation, empathy and flexibility have become increasingly vital in modern-day work." Those"
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
0386576
|
The beetle, endemic to Africa's Namib desert--where there is just 1.3 cm of rainfall a year--has inspired a few proof-of-concepts in the academic community, but this is the first time a self-filling water bottle has been proposed. The beetle survives by collecting condensation from the ocean breeze on the hardened shell of its wings. The shell is covered in tiny bumps that are water attracting (hydrophilic) at their tips and water-repelling..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
e49cfdd
|
Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the vital importance of having a caring adult or mentor in every young person's life? How many times did I hear about the value of having a coach--whether you are applying for a job for the first time at Walmart or running Walmart? How many times did I hear people stressing the importance of self-motivation and practice and taking..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
b293ace
|
The fact is, for our survival as a species, our very notion of "community" has to expand to the boundaries of the planet. That is a big statement, but it is true: if Mother Nature is treating us all as one, and if the power of one, the power of machines, and the power of flows can touch all of us at once, then we are a community whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not. And if we are a global community, we have to start to act ..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
8717591
|
Why is that so hard? Because "the one big bug we have as humans is that we are tribal," answers Marina Gorbis, executive director at the Institute for the Future. "We always need the group to give us identity. We are wired that way. From the first campfire, human beings evolved as tribal beings." And"
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
ddd5ff3
|
In the wake of World War I, however, the British and French took out their imperial pens and carved up what remained of the Ottoman dynastic empire, and created an assortment of nation-states in the Middle East modeled along their own. The borders of these new states consisted of neat polygons--with right angles that were always in sharp contrast to the chaotic reality on the ground. In the Middle East, modern Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestin..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
190723f
|
I am hardly a technophobe. But we will get the best of these technologies only if we don't let them distract us from making these deep human connections, addressing these deep human longings, and inspiring these deep human energies.
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
db68886
|
If I have to bet, I am going to bet on those lakes. I am going to bet on the basic decency that is still at the core of this community. I am going to bet on that decency expanding to embrace the people it has left out and behind, and on that embrace being reciprocated. Not because anything is "inevitable" but because I met too many people applying hope. It"
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
752408a
|
Smartphone technology gave rise to Uber, but before the world figures out how to regulate ride-sharing, self-driving cars will have made those regulations obsolete.
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
8eea1ea
|
With so many generous friends and family members from so many places for so many years, how could I not still be an optimist? Thomas
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
596c63f
|
it requires a public awakening, establishment of political will, resetting of priorities, sacrifice for the future, and an alliance of governments, businesses, and citizens.
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
014e67a
|
Thank you for buying this Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook. To
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
f3a233e
|
If the prospect of this flattening--and all of the pressures, dislocations, and opportunities accompanying it--makes you uneasy about the future, you are neither wrong nor alone.
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
b83f1fc
|
Havas Media, observed in a March 3, 2015, essay on TechCrunch.com: "Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening." Something" --
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
c27eefc
|
The Cold War was a struggle between two competing systems of order, dominated by two competing superpowers, who could, relatively speaking, keep their allies ideologically in line, physically intact, and militarily in check. The relevant geographic and ideological dividing lines were East-West, communist-capitalist, totalitarian-democratic. In
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
49a0e93
|
said Seidman. When "freedom from" outstrips "freedom to," amplified actors in the grip of destructive ideas "will cause more harm and destruction, unless they become inspired and enlisted in constructive human endeavors," he argued. "They will be like inmates on the loose." No"
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
b606c44
|
Ownership is the one thing that fixes more things so other things can be made easier to fix," argues the education expert Stefanie Sanford of the College Board. More often than not, she says, when citizens feel a sense of ownership over their country, when teachers feel a sense of ownership over their classrooms, when students feel a sense of ownership over their education, more good things tend to happen than bad. You get outcomes that are..
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
03ae918
|
When the necessary is impossible but the impossible is necessary, when no power wants to own the World of Disorder but, increasingly, no power can ignore it, it is going to take these hybrid combinations of drones and walls, aircraft carriers and Peace Corps volunteers, plus chickens, gardens, and Webs, to begin to create stability in the age of accelerations. Since
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |
|
837b527
|
Andreas Schleicher, who runs the Programme for International Student Assessment exams, a global evaluation of scholastic performance, observed that those scoring highest are Asian countries that have "ownership cultures--a high degree of professional autonomy for teachers ... where teachers get to participate in shaping standards and curriculum and have ample time for continuous professional development."
|
|
|
Thomas L. Friedman |