Thank You for Being Late

Short Review: I generally like Friedman's writing style (very story focused) and his world view (tech obsessed, culturally aware and globally focused). He is definitely susceptible to the charge of being a technocrat and maybe even naive about tech and the global economy being net positives.

This is a book that spends an awful lot of ink on the negatives of the world. But it is still an optomist's guide and that is another thing that I like about Friedman, he is still an optimist, not because he is uninformed about the world but because it is a natural part of the way he looks at the world.

This is a book about the perfect storm that facing us because of the increasing change in the areas of computing (primarily automation, big data, mobile capacity and miniaturization), globalization of the markets and ideas, and climate change.

The last third of the book is more personal. He tells some of his own story. How technology and global forces have changed his job as a journalist. And how the community where he grew up influenced his life. That ending is the inherently optimistic conclusion. Not that dealing with change is easy, but that it can be done.

My full (nearly 1500 word) review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/thank-you-for-being-late/