[MUSIC PLAYING]
SERGEY BRIN: A
special TGIF today.
Of course, they're all special.
But especially special
today because not only
do I have our distinguished
CEO, Eric, dressed
in a suit with a
tie and everything.
[APPLAUSE]
But we also have
Tom Friedman dressed
in a tie and a suit and
the whole kit and caboodle.
[APPLAUSE]
I assume Tom needs no
introduction, having been here
a number of times before.
But we are very delighted
to have him here again,
now with his new book out.
And I'm very anxious to
hear what he has to say.
And Eric, take it away.
ERIC SCHMIDT: So it
is a huge pleasure
to welcome you back to Google.
The title of your book
is "The World is Flat,"
and that view kind of went out
of style maybe 500 years ago.
But I want to make sure
first I want to give credit
to John Doerr and our friends
at Kleiner Perkins for including
you as part of this.
You're on the book
tour and in addition
to having this
very curious title,
in one week you're the
number one highly rated book
in the "New York Times
Book" magazine, right
to the top of the
best-seller list.
[APPLAUSE]
So I, of course, read
your column today
using the old technology.
And the important thing
here about "The World
is Flat" is you figured it out.
And when you came
to Google last time,
you were doing
research for this book.
So tell us what
were the things that
caused you to do this analysis?
You said there were 10
things that came together
to prove something which has
been false for 500 years.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN:
Well, it's a great way
to frame the question, Eric.
And first of all, thank you
for having me here again, Eric.
And Sergei, thank you
for the introduction.
And John Doerr,
thank you for making
it possible in this crazy
day to get me back and forth.
It's really a treat to be here.
I am at the end of
a six-week book tour
and this is one of
my very last stops
and I've been really
looking forward to this.
I was trying to think back
to our last conversation,
and I believe I was
here almost a year ago.
It was in June.
It was really before
I went on sabbatical.
And let me just sort
of recap one thing
and then try to tell you
what kind of came together
after I was here in
terms of my own thinking.
This book was
spawned, as I think
I talked a little bit last
time, quite by accident.
I've been doing documentaries
for the Discovery
Channel for the last few years
and back in January of 2004,
we were trying to
figure out what
to do our next documentary on.
We had done one on the wall
in Israel and the West Bank,
we had done one on
the roots of 9/11.
And at that time, the issue
of why the world hates America
was sort of this big hot issue.
And I had this
idea that we should
go to call centers
all over the world
and interview young people
who spend their days imitating
Americans on what they
thought of America.
And I thought it would be
a very interesting kind
of double image.
And literally, we were
costing that trip out
when John Kerry came out with
his blast against Benedict
Arnold executives who outsource
and suddenly, outsourcing
became this super hot issue.
And I decided with Discovery
that maybe we should just
go to Bangalore and do
a documentary called
"The Other Side of
Outsourcing" and look
at this from the ground up.
And we did about 60 hours of
interviews in the course of 10,
11 days there.
And throughout those
interviews, I really
got progressively sicker and
sicker and it wasn't the food.
ERIC SCHMIDT: It
wasn't the food.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN:
It wasn't the food.
It was somewhere between
the Indian entrepreneur who
wanted to do my taxes from
Bangalore and the one who
wanted to write my new
software from Bangalore
and the one who wanted to
read my x-rays from Bangalore
and the one who wanted to
trace my lost luggage on Delta
Airlines from Bangalore.
I began to realize that
while I had been sleeping,
while I'd been off covering the
9/11 war, something really big
had happened in this
globalization story
and I had missed it.
And the last interview we
did was with Nandan Nilekani,
who is the head of Infosys.
And actually, before
the interview started,
we were sitting on the couch
outside his office and Nandan
really just mentioned
in passing--
not so much in passing,
talking about what
he was going to talk about--
he said, Tom, the global
economic playing field
is being leveled and you
Americans are not ready.
Oh, I wrote that down
in my little notebook,
the global economic playing
field is being leveled.
And the book really emerged
because on the bus ride back
from Infosys to
the hotel, I just
kept rolling that
over in my head,
the playing field
is being leveled.
What Nandan is telling
me, I finally realized,
was that the playing
field was being flattened.
And then really
the brainstorm that
produced the book happened
on some pothole on the road
to my hotel.
I suddenly realized
what he was telling
me was that the world was flat
and he was actually citing this
as a great achievement
in human development,
that we'd made the world flat.
So I went back to the
hotel, I called my wife.
I said, honey, I'm going to
write a book called "The World
is Flat."
She thought I was
stark-raving mad.
But I came home and told the
publisher of the "New York
Times" and my
editor, Gail Collins,
the editor of the editorial
page, I basically told them,
I've got to go on
leave immediately
because my software,
the analytical framework
through which I'm
looking at the world
and trying to understand
foreign affairs, is out of date
and I need to update it.
And if I don't update
it immediately,
I'm going to write
something really stupid
in the "New York Times."
It's a great way to get a
leave, I've got to tell you.
You can't beat it.
I mean, it's hard
to say no, right?
So that's really
what I've been doing
and that's what really
brought me to Google last June
and whatnot.
And you'll recall when I
was here last time, Eric,
that I talked to you
and to Larry and Sergei
about this idea of the
thing that really struck me
when I was in Bangalore--
because I had been off covering
the 9/11 wars all that time,
in fact one time came
here and talked about it--
that when I would sit across
the table from someone
like Jerry Rao, the head of
Nascom, the Indian high tech
association, I would sort
of end every interview
after the cameras went off by
saying, Jerry, what did I miss?
Something's happened.
What did I miss?
And it was really in a quest
to answer that question.
Because people were
offering to do things.
They were telling me
they were doing things
that I really couldn't explain.
And so the second
chapter of the book
really is called "The 10 Days
that Flattened the World."
It's about the 10 forces and
events that came together.
And I talked about that last
time, the different forces
that I thought created
this level playing field.
But what I did after
I left here, Eric,
was in working on it more
thinking it through more,
I actually tied those 10
flatteners together into what I
think was more of a
conceptual framework--
it wasn't just 10 things--
and maybe I'll go through
them really quickly
and try to explain what I mean.
ERIC SCHMIDT: You
don't think it's just
broadband and the internet?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It's not just
broadband and the internet, no.
The 10 flatteners for
me were first 11/9;
11/9 is the day the Berlin
Wall came down, 11/9/89.
That hugely important
because it allowed
us to look at the world
as a single flat plane.
And the first
flattener is called
"When the Walls Came down
and the Windows Came Up,"
because the Windows operating
system shipped five months
after the fall of
the Berlin Wall.
So the two things
happened at the same time.
We got to see the world
as a single flat plane--
ERIC SCHMIDT: And
one still crashes.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: And
one still crashes.
No, I didn't say
that; he said that.
[APPLAUSE]
ERIC SCHMIDT: We use more
reliable [INAUDIBLE].
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Very good.
So good.
The second flattener
was 8/9/95, and that was
the day Netscape went public.
And I argue that Netscape
went public helped, obviously,
bring the internet alive,
gave us open standards
to make sure no company
dominated the internet,
and thirdly triggered
the dotcom boom,
which triggered the
dotco bubble, which
triggered the accidental
investment in all
this fiberoptic cable.
The third flattener I
simply call workflow,
and that was all the stuff and
standards, all the software
that basically connected
all that bandwidth with all
those PCs and the idea
that over the 1990s,
a kind of quiet revolution
happened in workflow that
allowed everyone's application
to connect everyone else's
application.
So when I left
here, basically, I
realized that actually, these
first three were actually
the genesis moment
of the flat world.
Because once you had an
internet that came alive,
I would argue thanks
to the browser,
suddenly you had people able to
connect with people like never
before and more
cheaply than ever,
thanks to all that
fiberoptic cable.
Once you had applications
that were made interoperable
with other
applications, it meant
people could work together on
more different stuff than ever
before.
And when you put the two
together, what you really got,
I think, was the genesis
moment of the flat world,
that is when we could
connect with each other
and when we could
work together, what
we created was a global
platform for multiple forms
of collaboration.
Suddenly, more people could
collaborate on more stuff
than ever before.
Well, then I thought about
my next six flatteners,
which when I was here were
just sort of six things.
And what I realized
what these were
were the six new
forms of collaboration
that sprung from this platform.
So they are, very quickly,
outsourcing-- well,
outsourcing is just a new
form of collaboration.
The second is offshoring.
Outsourcing is I take
my finance department
and move it to north Palo
Alto, North Dakota, or north
Bangalore.
Off this new platform,
either one is equally easy.
Offshoring is where I
take my whole factory
and move it from Canton,
Ohio to Canton, China.
The third one is open sourcing.
I realized open sourcing is
just a new form of collaboration
now for making everything from
free software to Wikipedia.
The fourth new form
of collaboration I
call supply chaining.
When I was here I
talked about Wal-Mart,
but Wal-Mart is just a metaphor
for a new form of collaboration
where you take
supply chaining down
to the last atom of efficiency.
So an item is taken off
the shelf in a Wal-Mart
in San Francisco and
another is immediately
made in Shenzhen, China.
If Wal-Mart were a
country, today it
would be China's eighth
largest trading partner
after Canada and Australia.
So Yossi Sheffi, who does
supply chain logistics at MIT,
has a nice saying.
He says, making
stuff, that's easy;
supply chain,
that's really hard.
And when you think about it,
it's kind of interesting.
Wal-Mart is the biggest
company in America today
that doesn't make a thing,
other than supply chain.
So supply changing, new
form of collaboration.
The fifth new form
of collaboration I
call insourcing.
That's what UPS does.
They come inside your
company now and take over
your whole internal logistics.
As I came to study
more about UPS,
I came to realize
that the people
in the funny brown trucks
and the funny brown shirts
and shorts were not just
delivering packages,
they're doing
internal logistics.
And the example I give
in the book, of course,
is Toshiba laptop.
Your Toshiba breaks,
you call Toshiba,
they say bring it to the
UPS Store, ship it to us,
we'll fix it in 72
hours and send it back.
Of course, what
you don't know is
it goes from the UPS
Store to the UPS hub
at Louisville
Airport in Kentucky,
where in a clean room
in a hangar airline
hangar at Louisville Airport,
your Toshiba laptop is
repaired by a UPS
employee and it never
touches Toshiba's hands.
And this is true now for a
lot of things, everything
from Nike.com to
Papa John's pizzas,
their trucks are actually
driven by UPS employees.
So in-sourcing, a new
form of collaboration.
And this is going to
be very interesting
because this is going to
drive a lot of standards.
Because as you take this
down from big companies
to want to do it to little
companies, for little companies
you're going to require lots
of standards, huge flattener.
And the sixth and last form
of collaboration was Google.
And at the time, I just
said, it was Google.
But I realized that what you
do is a form of collaboration
I call informing.
Because I can now inform myself.
I could collaborate
with data all by myself.
So to me Google, TiVo are
new forms of collaboration.
I can inform myself
on entertainment,
I can inform myself
on information.
I wrote this book without
a research assistant.
My researcher was Google.
I wrote my first book, I
wrote "Beirut to Jerusalem,"
I had a physical researcher
who sat next to me.
He brought me physical paper,
I handed him physical money.
[LAUGHTER]
I wrote this book
entirely with Google
as my research assistant.
And I found it was not
only more efficient,
but actually I
discovered and stumbled
over so many things I never
would have found had I not
been informing myself.
So now we have the first three,
they created this platform
for collaboration.
With the next six, I realized
the new forms of collaboration
that have sprung
off this platform
and flattened the
world even more.
Well, that's nine and I said
there were 10 when I was here.
So I scratched my
head, what is the 10th?
And when I was here, I
talked about wireless.
But I realized the
10th flattener was now
what I call the steroids.
And the steroids are
wireless, voice over IP,
and file sharing--
Napster, BitTorrent,
things like that.
And what these steroids are
doing are turbocharging all six
of these new forms
of collaboration
so I can now do any
one from anywhere
with any device totally mobile.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Were you the
chief technical correspondent
or the chief foreign
correspondent?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: No.
ERIC SCHMIDT: It's amazing
what you turned out.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I
just figured it all out
after basically I was here.
ERIC SCHMIDT: But
this book is probably
the defining book in this age
of how this platform is going
to work because a lot of people
are very worried about what
your book says.
For example, it's
been observed that we
have inflationary spending
in the United States, deficit
spending, so forth
and so on, yet prices
are not going up because of the
deflationary nature of China--
a new force, something people
haven't really thought through.
If we extend your ideas, that's
going to be endemic, right?
Because one of the things
that happens now is it's
a global market.
Who are the people who are
most negatively affected?
Google is an example of a
company possibly affected
by these enormous
things you've unearthed.
Who are the people who
are most threatened?
How will they react?
How does this play out?
What's the map for the
next five or 10 years?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, I
think there's reason to worry.
And that's why
the point I made--
Eric and both spoke this
morning at the [INAUDIBLE] Econ
Conference--
one of the points I made to
them and I made to the Business
Roundtable this
week is that I think
business and
businesses like Google
are going to have to be more
outspoken about defending
both the challenges and the
opportunities of this world
because I think all the
political incentives are going
to be the other way.
And I really smell
that in Washington.
Now, what I what
I tried to argue
in thinking through
your question, Eric,
is that I have a chapter in the
book called "The Untouchables,"
and the argument is that
when the world goes flat,
the global caste system
gets turned upside down.
The highest caste
become the untouchables.
Untouchables are people whose
jobs cannot be outsourced.
OK.
Now, who would be an
untouchable in this world?
Well, I would argue there are
going to be four categories.
First are people who
are really special--
Michael Jordan,
Barbra Streisand--
they can't be outsourced,
you know what I mean?
These are people--
Eric Schmidt, Sergei Brin, Larry
Page, they can't be outsourced.
OK.
Second are people who
are really specialized,
I'm sure 95% of the
people in this room--
people who really
have a specialized
skill that is not fungible.
And third are people
who are really anchored,
and that's going to
apply to a lot of people.
That's everything from
your doctor to your nurse
to your barber to the chef to
all kinds of people whose jobs
have to be done in
a specific location,
no matter how flat
the world gets.
But the fourth,
and this really I
think is what's going
to apply to 90% of us,
is going to be people who know
how to learn how to learn,
people who are really adaptable.
Because it seems
to me what's going
to happen as the
world goes flat,
and as I watch
Google I think it's
a perfect manifestation
of this, we're
connecting all the knowledge
pools in the world together.
That's what it really means.
We're connecting the
knowledge pools in India,
the knowledge pools in
China, the knowledge pools
in Palo Alto more
intimately than ever before.
I think as a result,
we're on the cusp
of an era of innovation
that's going to be remarkable.
I interviewed somebody
in the last week
and they told me Motorola is
developing a cell phone that
will be sold for $12.
And so all I could think
of is, when the $12 cell
phone, the internet-enabled
cell phone,
meets Google, that means
there's a lot of people in India
and China that are
going be walking around
with all the world's
knowledge in their pocket.
And I believe
that's going to lead
to an explosion of innovation.
The next great
breakthrough in bio science
could come from a
15-year-old in Romania
who downloads the human genome.
So what the result
of that is I think
we're going to see creative
destruction on steroids.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Well, in
fact, in your column,
you point out in
the ACM programming
contest, the winners--
Shanghai, Beijing,
all over the world.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN:
We came in 17th.
So just to finish
this point, Eric,
is that I think that
the really skill you
need to be safe in
this world is you've
got to be really adaptable.
You've got to be able
to learn how to learn.
And I'm an example of this.
I had to retool myself.
I mean, I've just spent the last
year completely re-engineering
my skills because I went out
in the world and I discovered,
look, you can't write about
the West Bank and Bosnia
every week.
I mean, know everyone else does,
but I mean, I don't want to.
And so if you want to be
relevant in explaining
the world, I had to
answer the questions
that I couldn't answer.
So I had to upgrade my skills.
And I think we
all are going to--
the future belongs to
those who are really
good at learning how to learn.
And I think that's
really the skill.
ERIC SCHMIDT: I want to
ask one more question,
then I'd like to encourage
audience questions,
which I think are always
more interesting than my own.
In the last 15 years,
you have really
defined the analysis and
coverage of the Middle East
in many actions and
made your mark there.
You've now seen the world
with a flat perspective
and I don't personally
see the impact
from this message on your
former area of expertise,
current area, and perhaps
you'll go back to that.
I don't see the
changes happening yet
in that part of the
world from you thesis.
I 100% agree with your thesis.
So what's wrong?
Is it just time,
is it investment?
I think it's all positive
for the Middle East.
Everything you say
should ultimately
result in a more
stable, better informed,
better educated outcome.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, that's
a very good question, Eric.
And I'd give you three ways,
and they're not all positive,
where the flat world is at
work in that part of the world.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Does not work?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: No, is at work.
But they're not always positive.
One of the points I
try to make in the book
is that when the world goes--
the flat world is a friend
of Infosys and of al-Qaeda.
OK?
And to me, al-Qaeda--
and what I've done is
basically take my analysis now,
reapply it to the Middle East.
And so when I do that, what I
see when I look at al-Qaeda,
I see nothing more than an open
source global supply chain.
The person who understood
supply chains better or as well
as Sam Walton was
Osama bin Laden.
And al-Qaeda today
is nothing more
than a global open-source
suicide supply chain.
You deploy a suicide
bomber in Tikrit
and another is immediately
recruited and deployed
down the supply chain
from somewhere else
in the Muslim world.
So that's one way.
In fact, one of the points
that I've been arguing--
and I haven't been
able to develop this
because I don't have
enough raw material--
is I think we're up
against something
in Iraq that we
just don't know how
to deal with, that we're
still thinking vertically,
command and control, when
our enemy is thinking
connect and collaborate.
We're approaching it
vertically, what is basically
a horizontal enemy.
And I think we're dealing, as
I say, with a kind of suicide
supply chain and we've never
faced anything like this
before.
It's a very flat organization
and we don't quite
know how to get
our arms around it.
So that's kind of one area where
I'd say the flat world applies.
Another area, and this
is to the negative,
is when the world goes--
ERIC SCHMIDT: The
first one wasn't?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Yeah, this
is even more to the negative.
When the world goes flat,
you get your humiliation
fiber-optically.
OK?
You get your humiliation at 56k.
And because you can see
just where the caravan is
and just how far behind you are.
And if you believe, as I do,
that what is really behind 9/11
is humiliation, a deep sense
of a proud civilization
having fallen behind, the
flattening of the world
intensifies that enormously.
But on the up
side, I don't think
you have the cedar
revolution in Lebanon
without the flattening
of the world.
The Lebanese were
sitting there, they
watched exactly what happened in
Georgia, exactly what happened
in Ukraine, and
said, wait a minute,
if these guys can do
that, why can't we?
And in talking to
Lebanese friends,
they made that very clear.
They were watching all of
this play out on satellite.
Now, the tragic
accident of Hariri
being killed, the
prime minister, which
triggered all this that
obviously was necessary,
but the flattening of the
world was the sufficient thing
to make it possible.
That part of the world,
what keeps that resistant,
I would say, is oil,
is the curse of oil.
And so it allows you to
build certain barriers
for a time against these
pressures of globalization.
And right now because
of the windfall in oil,
they've really been able to
keep the dam up, basically.
But I think it's only
a matter of time,
the flattening is
and will come there.
The Berlin Wall is falling
in the Arab Muslim world
today, that's the good news.
The uncertain news is
that Vaclav Havel is not
on the other side.
OK?
And neither is Lech Welesa,
neither is the solidarity trade
movement.
That's not a bad thing.
I mean that only
to say that they
have a very different attitude
toward the West, a very
different set of political
actors, a much more
complex society.
It isn't a group of people just
dying to jump into our arms,
as we had in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union.
And so when the flattening comes
there and the wall comes down,
it isn't so they can be
pro-American or pro-Western.
They're going to
make their own way,
they're going to
shape their own thing.
I'm still net positive
about it, but it's going
to be really, really complex.
It's going to be one of
the great dramas, I think,
to watch on the world
stage, how this plays out.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Let's get some
questions from our audience.
Who would like to begin?
AUDIENCE: You mentioned
earlier that one
of the major losers in
this would be politicians
and that there would be
resistance from that.
Could you elaborate
and possibly discuss
what we either individually
or corporately can
do to ease their minds?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: The
question is really where are
kind of politicians
going to go with this
and what can any individual
or company do to tilt it
in the right direction?
I don't say this to be cute, I
say this to tell you something
that I only realized when
I got done with the book.
I wrote a 488-page book about
the next phase of globalization
and I didn't interview
anyone in the US government
and I live in Washington, DC.
I mean, I had an accidental
conversation with Colin Powell
that's in the book.
I needed some reference
so I talked to a librarian
at the National
Science Foundation.
But I don't think either
of those really count.
And so I went for wisdom
and insight somewhere else.
I'm sure there are people
in the government who
could have helped,
but this is just not
really on the agenda
of Washington, DC.
The argument I'm
making in the book
is that we're going from
vertical to horizontal in terms
of how value will be created.
My guess is over
time, this is going
to be the mother of
all inflection points.
This is going to
change everything.
I think it's going
to be Google's just
part of this manifestation.
This process is going
to be bigger or as big
as Gutenberg and the printing
press when it's done.
And just when we've
reached this point,
nobody's talking about it.
Doing this book was a little bit
like being in a science fiction
movie.
And I go around and
interview people
you know like Eric or
Sergei and Larry here,
people at Microsoft,
people at Intel, John Doerr
and his friends.
But talking to you all is
like talking to pod people.
You're like pod people in
a science fiction movie.
You know the secret
and you're all
doing it like crazy, thank god.
But nobody's told the kids.
Nobody's told the kids.
So we just had an election
where Democrats were debating
whether NAFTA was a good
idea and the Republicans
put duct tape over the mouth
of Chief White House Economist
Greg Mankiw when
he said outsourcing
made sense and stashed him
in Dick Cheney's basement
never to be heard from again.
So right at the moment when
we've reached, I think,
a really important
inflection point,
no one's talking about it.
And I think first
of all, there's
just a huge education
responsibility, an opportunity
here, what world
we're living in--
what are the challenges and
what are the opportunities.
Now, my guess is--
being on a book tour is a
really interesting experiences
because you get to talk
to a lot of normal people,
basically, outside
of Washington, DC.
And I would tell you if you
said, Tom, what did you learn
and six weeks of
book tour, I would
tell you I learned there's
a huge undertow of concern
out there by parents
about education.
They sense something's
going on out there
that their kids and that
the political system
is not discussing and
preparing them for.
They're really, I think,
worried and confused
about it and no
politician yet that I see,
Democrat or Republican,
has seized this
and tried to define a
political agenda about it.
Nobody can be in Congress
at 12:00 midnight
to discuss the fact that
the National Science
Foundation cut its budget
by $100 million last year.
And so your last point
is the one I worry about.
Probably we're in a quiet
crisis right now, I would argue.
It's not going to change our
standard of living overnight,
tomorrow, the next day.
But if we don't begin to
adapt, I think it will.
And as my friend,
Paul Romer, says,
a crisis is a terrible
thing to waste.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Funny enough, the
point I wanted to ask about
has also to do with
political backlash.
It's not about a country we
would expect intense austerity
from, but the president of the
major governing political party
of Germany has come
out and defined
the international investing
community as locusts,
eating all day,
they find their way.
So reflecting on
that, I don't really
see a connection between
the flattening that
is terrifying German
politicians and the kind
of technological
and social issues
you mentioned so much as to
financial issues, the fact
that capital is roaming the
Earth, whether for good or for
ill.
Do you have any
reflections on that?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN:
A good question.
I would simply say two things.
One is the last documentary
we just did was about Europe
and got a chance to look at
that very, very close hand.
I think Europe's in for just a
tremendous tsunami, basically,
from this flattening process.
Compared to the social
benefits they had
and what they're likely to
have to give up in order
to realign themselves
with this world,
I think it's going to
politically enormously
destabilizing.
You said something
and I'm just, sorry,
blanking out for a second
on what the other point I
wanted to make.
I'll think of it in a second.
I'm sorry.
But that's sort of
my broad reaction
is that they're basically not
having this discussion at all
over there.
I can see it in the
contrast between the reviews
of the book here and the
reviews of the book there.
And my record on writing books
on globalization is intact.
"The Lexus and the
Olive Tree" was
translated into 29 languages,
all except one, French.
And so my record is intact.
And so far we don't-- and I
offered to give it away for $1
to any French
publisher wanted it.
So I think that
they still really
have not gotten their
mind around this story yet
and I think it's going to
be politically very, very
destabilizing.
ERIC SCHMIDT: They
had that problem
with Christopher Columbus.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: They had that
problem with Columbus, too--
exactly right.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I like what you
said about there being
only a small group of people
whose jobs can't be outsourced
and I tend to agree with that.
I was wondering if
you'd thought further
about what's the
distribution going
to be like of people who
in these different groups,
meaning where's the
middle class going to go?
Are we just going to
divide up into people
who are in the top
caste and everyone else,
and there's going to be
a big gap in the middle?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It's an
important question, too.
And let me just
say I don't know.
I really tried not to
write a book of futurology
because there's a lot of
those books out there--
in five years, you'll be
able to talk to your shoe
and it'll turn the
oven on at home
and there will be
no middle class.
And I really tried to
write a book by saying,
here's the world
as I see it, here's
how I'm trying to explain it.
So part of my answer
to you is I don't know.
I spend so much from just
trying to figure it out.
But what I would
say my gut tells
me is that people are
missing on the upside,
is that two things happen
when the world goes flat.
One is the global
economy gets bigger.
Well, that's great if you're
in the ideas business,
you're in the
knowledge business.
Whether you're in the Google
business or the Microsoft
business or the "New
York Times" business,
the market is going to
grow much bigger, OK?
And it's also, I think,
what people miss,
going to grow more complex.
And I would take an
example I've often
used that John taught me
this from your own industry.
I mean, 10 years ago there
was no Google, all right?
And suddenly now,
this is considered
you know one of the hottest,
most dynamic companies
in the country.
Then someone comes
along and realized
that, jeez, if Tom Friedman's
suitcase company comes up
on Google ahead of Samsonite,
there's real dollars in that.
So suddenly, you get an industry
of search engine optimizers
cropping up all around you.
And it seems to
me that basically,
if you have knowledge
skills, if you
are what I would call
a knowledge person,
the worst that'll happen to
you in a flat world is you
will have to move horizontally.
OK?
That is maybe China
will in 10 years
specialize in things
that Google does
today that are commodities
and people here
will move horizontally
into something else.
I am convinced if you
have the knowledge skills,
there is going to
be a place for you.
If you don't have
the knowledge skills,
you're going to have
to move vertically.
You're going to have to move
from the non-knowledge world
into the knowledge world.
Now, when that happens,
two good things happen.
One, you get more people able
to access these kind of jobs
and secondly, you shrink the
pool of non-knowledge workers.
And when you do that, the
price that plumbers can charge
goes from $75 to $100 an hour.
So you actually benefit.
As we all know, look
for either child care
or a plumber or a carpenter.
You want to shrink those jobs,
as well, so their wages come up
at the same time.
So the thing I always
tell myself is look,
after World War II,
we stood astride
the world totally dominant.
We had the only industrial
economy standing.
Japan was decimated and
Europe was decimated.
What did we do?
We did the Marshall Plan.
We built both of these countries
up into huge competitors.
And what happened?
Our standard of living grew
for six straight decades.
It's because the global economy
grows and it gets more complex.
But it's very hard
to see, and therefore
as it gets more complex,
new industries, new jobs
get spun off.
As long as you have knowledge
skills, you'll get one of them.
And that's why I think the
biggest challenge for us
is look, 100 years
ago, 90% of Americans
worked in agriculture,
today 2% do.
Well, if we'd all been
watching Lou Dobbs back then,
imagine what Lou
Dobbs' show would have
sounded like in about 1850.
You mean you're
introducing a thresher?
What do you mean?
Benedict Arnold, you're
introducing a combine?
Do you know what this is going
to do to people on the farm?
Do you know many jobs you're
going to lose on the farm?
Well, fortunately, Lou
Dobbs wasn't around in 1850,
but some other people
were who started
the high school movement and
the land grant universities.
I was looking this
up the other day.
Do you know when we started
our land great universities?
1862.
Remember what was also
happening in 1862?
There was a little bit
of a war going on here,
OK, in our own country.
In the middle of the
Civil War, Abraham Lincoln
had the wisdom to start the
land grant universities.
And it was thanks to the high
school movement and the land
grant universities we took all
those people from the farms
into the industrial age.
Now we're going to have to take
people in the industrial age
into the post-industrial age.
And you do that not with
secondary education,
but with post-secondary
education--
community college, technical
school, university.
And I think that the thing we
should be talking about today
is not taking apart the New Deal
by privatizing social security.
We need a new New Deal
around tertiary education.
That's the biggest thing.
Let's not worry about the safety
net-- or let's get that right--
but let's focus on the
income opportunity,
not this side of it.
AUDIENCE: Speaking of supply
chain companies like Wal-Mart,
do you think their labor
and externalization
of cost policies are intrinsic
to being a supply chain
company or just part of
their corporate culture?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN:
Interesting question.
I spent a lot of time with
Wal-Mart doing this book
and that was an
interesting experience.
And you really do have to
go to Bentonville, Arkansas
to understand Wal-Mart.
And what I learned when
I went to Bentonville,
it all became clear to me, on
the upside and the downside.
The really first thing that
strikes you about Bentonville
is it really is in
the middle of nowhere.
I mean this is
Little Abner country.
These are the "Beverly
Hillbillies," OK?
So that's the first
point that strikes you.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Running the
largest company in the world.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: So then you
have the question of, well,
how did Little Abner become the
largest company in the world?
And it's very interesting
because they out-innovated all
their--
they're mean, they're
nasty, they're tough,
and they were the
earliest adopters
of every new technology, from
computers to wireless to RFID.
And so why were they?
Well, it was that there's no
mother like necessity, OK,
that because they were out
there in the middle of nowhere
and had to get a global supply
chain that could connect
Bentonville, Arkansas
with all of these places,
they were early adopters.
And that seems to me to be what
Wal-Mart doesn't get credit
for.
I mean, they out-innovated
their competitors.
That's what allowed them to
be mean, nasty, and tough.
At the same time,
it was precisely
because they were in
the middle of nowhere,
not in the middle of Manhattan.
They were just so
focused on that,
they lost sight of
everything else.
And they, like baby
Huey, just grew up
to be the biggest
company in America
without developing any of
the other habits, culture
that you really need
to go with that.
Now, on the labor side,
I'm not so sure that--
I know what you're asking, but
I don't address it in the books
so I'm thinking on my feet.
Because people often ask
me, what comes after this?
And it does seem
to me more machines
talking to machines is
really what comes after this.
And I've got to believe
that's going to be
a big part of supply chain.
And therefore, what that's going
to mean for labor at the supply
chain end, as opposed
to the retail front,
is probably not good in that
sense for unskilled labor
would be my guess.
ERIC SCHMIDT: That's good.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Thank
you, Mr. Friedman.
Since it's a technology
company here,
I thought I'd like to ask
you a question about that.
I noticed that many of the
10 triggers you mentioned
were technologically oriented.
I'm wondering, do
you see any kinds
of technological advancement
over the next couple of years
that you think are going
to have a particularly
strong influence, either
for good or for bad,
on this flattening process?
Or maybe phrased another way,
say you were working here.
What would be the
sorts of projects
that you would be the most
excited about right now?
ERIC SCHMIDT: And
by the way, I think
your offer is in your email.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Well, I'll
tell you what worries me
and what excites me.
I kind of alluded to it.
What worries me is that
the flat world really
is a friend of
Infosys and al-Qaeda.
And I see this more and more.
Think about what terrorism used
to be and what it is today.
The old model of
terrorism was we go out,
we do an outrageous act, we get
the "New York Times" and CBS
to come and cover it, and we
rattle everyone in the world.
Not anymore.
Now I go to bed, I fire
up AOL in the morning,
and there's a message from
Zarqawi, almost an email right
to me, right there on my screen.
And so I'm worried about that.
One thing I've learned
in doing all of this,
the terrorists are
always early adopters.
Terrorists are always
early adopters.
And I'm afraid if
we're not as equally
early adopters of
the latest technology
that that will be
a real problem.
And so that's kind
of on the downside.
On the upside, it
just seems to me
that really what I
alluded to earlier,
that that 15-year-old
with a $12 phone
and an internet connection
that gets them onto Google
in their own language, what
the implications of that
are going to be on the world.
That's really, really
going to be enormous.
What worries me about it,
though, a little as a quasi
public figure is
that we've moved
into an age where the
accusation is the punishment.
My daughter goes off to college
and before she goes, and I'm
sure you've all heard this
story from your own experiences,
she starts telling me
about her roommates.
And I say, well, how
do you know this?
And she said, I Googled them.
I said, well, you mean your
roommates have a Google
profile?
I mean, these are high school
kids, you know what I mean?
And so in this flat world, the
accusation is the punishment
and your Google reputation
now will just stick with you.
Mark Twain said,
always tell the truth
and you never have to
remember what you said.
And it's doubly true now
in a world of Google,
you know what I mean?
You better behave well
because your Google reputation
is going to stick with you.
And so those are just some
of the things randomly
that I'm thinking about.
But I can just tell you,
as I said earlier, I just
wrote a whole book and my
research assistant was Google.
I wrote this book in nine
months from a standing start.
I never could have
done it without search
at the level of today.
There's no question about it.
And so for someone who's
really smart and a scientist,
that's got to be
really, really exciting.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Well thank you.
AUDIENCE: You can look at the
history of the corporation
kind of to see lessons learned
and best practices about people
learning how to collaborate
and becoming more productive.
And along with that
history, you see
a trade-off with the free market
versus government intervention
tend to also protect, as well
as to encourage innovation.
So now with a flat world that
crosses political boundaries,
what do you see as the proper
role for our government
or other governments
to get involved
in regulating this process?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It's
an important question.
I kind of lay out
my own philosophy
in the book, which I call
compassionate flatism,
that I believe since
we never really did
compassionate conservatism,
we might as well
get compassionate flatism.
Because my argument is that
basically this flattening
process, this is
going to be as big
as a challenge as communism.
And if we don't have as
comprehensive a response
to flatism as we
did to communism,
it's going to be
enormously destabilizing.
So let me go through
quickly the points
that I believe are important.
First of all, it
requires a different kind
of political leadership.
It requires political leaders
who won't make us stupid
and will actually explain to
us the world we're living in,
both the challenges
and the opportunities,
and to get excited
about the opportunity.
There's something incredibly
exciting about it,
I can feel it every
time I come to Google.
But what was the last time
you heard a politician really
get excited about this world.
So that's number one.
And as an analog
to that, I happen
to believe that there is
such an obvious opportunity
for President Bush to inspire
the same kind of excitement
about science and engineering
that President Kennedy did
with the moonshot, to get
young men and women to go
into science and engineering
in the numbers that
did in the Kennedy day.
And that to me is
energy independence.
To make energy independence the
moon shot of our generation,
to get every young person
excited about going
into science or engineering,
to make their contribution
to the environment, to
geopolitics, to the deficit
by making America
energy independent.
It's so out there,
it's so obvious,
and it would be so compelling.
So first level different
kind of political leadership.
Secondly, I believe we
need national health
care, some version of
national health care.
I can't tell you how many
CEOs I interviewed that said,
we're moving jobs abroad because
I don't want the unfunded
liability of the health care.
Short of that, we
definitely need
totally portable pensions
and totally portable health
care so people can take
their pensions and health
care as they move
from job to job
and be as flexible as
this world demands.
Third, I think we
need wage insurance.
And this idea I lay out in
the book is not my idea.
Lori Kletzer and
Bob Litan lay this
out as a way of easing
people who get caught
in this into new jobs quickly.
Fourthly, I believe
that we need to make
tertiary education,
post-secondary education,
available to every
American who wants it.
I think it's just
the only solution.
Lastly, we need a different
form of parenting.
We're now blending with two
cultures, India and China,
that have a very high
ethic of education.
And that's why my advice is, I
mean, to myself as a parent is
to throw away the Gameboy,
shut off the stupid television,
and get Johnny and
Susie down to work.
Because I probably
said this last time,
but when I was growing up,
my parents used to say to me,
Tom, finish your dinner
people in China and India
are starving.
And I tell my girls,
girls, finish your homework
because people in
China and India
are starving for your job.
And in a flat world,
they could have it.
Bill Gates pointed out
something to me in the book
that I think is very
important to keep in mind.
30 years ago if you had a
choice of being born a B
student in Palo Alto or a
genius in Bangalore or Beijing,
there was no question you wanted
to be a student in Palo Alto
because your life choices
opportunities would be so much
greater as a B student in Palo
Alto than a genius in Bangalore
and Beijing.
When the world is
flat, you do not
want to be a B
student in Palo Alto
because every genius in
Bangalore and Beijing
can now plug and play,
compete, connect,
and collaborate in ways they
never could have before.
And so I think it takes
a different approach
to parenting.
As I said in my column this
morning that Eric alluded to,
I've had this
feeling for a while
that we are our
Olympic basketball
team, the sort of
lackadaisical team
that just sort of thought
they could show up
and they came on with
the bronze medal.
And the way in which our
Olympic basketball team
has kind of mirrored the
national mood I think
is something to keep in mind.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Thank you for coming.
I would imagine that the
flattening of the world
would impact most places that
are otherwise been isolated
and have perhaps--
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Can you
please speak a little closer
to the mic?
AUDIENCE: Oh, sure.
I would imagine that the
flattening of the world
would impact most of the places
that have been isolated up
until now.
And the US, in my mind, is
not the most closed community.
For instance, it has been
importing skilled and educated
people for a long time.
A lot of the same
people who have
to be able to learn and
to adapt, a lot of them
are in this room.
It has had a pretty free
press and the capital markets
are pretty well-functioning.
So when you say that the
US is woefully unprepared,
I'm curious.
Do you mean is it
compared to the optimum
or compared to other
countries and what should we
do to be prepared?
And also, what do
you teach your kids?
How do you prepare
for what's coming?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Good.
It's a good question.
I think it's compared
to the optimum.
I think it's compared
to what we could
be given the natural resources
that we have as a country.
And I mean not just material
ones, but institutional ones,
just what you referred to--
the best research
universities in the world,
the best rule of law, the
best intellectual property
protection.
I think we've got all
the secrets of the sauce
to succeed in this world.
The question is, are
we enriching them,
are we investing in them?
What are we doing cutting the
National Science Foundation
budget by $100 million last
year at this moment in time?
So it's really that.
It's really trying to attention
people to those choices
that I'm really
trying to focus on.
I don't think we're in a
crisis today, but in 15 years
I think we could be in a
crisis, one that really would
affect our standard of living.
Look, our relative lead over
the world is going to shrink,
that's inevitable.
The question is whether
absolutely it does.
And I think that
depends on what we do.
ERIC SCHMIDT: So we're pretty
much running out of time.
We've got four Googlers who
have important questions.
In the spirit of
moving forward, Larry,
can you ask your question
and we'll have Kim
and Peter and so forth
and then maybe you can
give a combined answer as a--
[LAUGHTER]
This is a test.
You're going to do well.
Larry, go ahead.
LARRY PAGE: Actually, I want
to answer one of your questions
first.
ERIC SCHMIDT: That's
not what I asked.
[LAUGHTER]
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Now
I know I'm at Google.
LARRY PAGE: Well, no.
You asked, when
was the last time
you heard a politician
who was generally
interested in technology?
Both Colin Powell and
Al Gore visited recently
and to my viewpoint, at least,
they both genuinely were.
So they do exist.
I don't actually have a question
as much sort of a request
for comments about two ideas.
One of them is competition
and the other one
is what I like to call
the militant moderates.
So basically, on the
competition side,
the basic question
there is has in history
or in present or
going future there
been a country,
society, or company
that's ever been able
to thrive and survive
in the absence of any
threat or any competition?
And then the question
on the moderate side
is I sort of take the
fundamental viewpoint
that the average or the
majority is, in fact, moderate
and I'm just sort of wondering
when these various things are
happening, when there's the
various turmoil, at what point
does that majority
actually regain
the power from the extremes?
ERIC SCHMIDT: So Kim.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Good point.
AUDIENCE: Very quickly.
So to what extent are
you concerned that we're
creating a new
underclass of people
who no matter how
educated they are simply
don't have the
intellectual capability
to keep up in this
new world and what
do we do about that so it's
no longer access to capital
[INAUDIBLE]?
ERIC SCHMIDT: Peter.
AUDIENCE: So first of
all, thanks for doing
your research on Google.
And I recognize that now the
responsibility for eliminating
errors in the "New York
Times" has partially
shifted from you to my team.
ERIC SCHMIDT: I believe you are
the director of quality, right,
so the responsibility
is directly on you.
AUDIENCE: So we'll try not
to let the "Times" down.
But I wanted to say on the
US finishing 17th in the ACM
contest, I think
that's a little bit
alarmist to worry about that.
The way I interpret
it is if you're
a hot team of programmers
in India or Latvia,
the best thing you can do is go
make your name on that contest,
whereas if you're in the US,
you go out and start a company.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Interesting.
That's a good point.
AUDIENCE: It seems like it's
still easier to do that here.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN:
It's a good point.
That's interesting.
AUDIENCE: The answer
to his question
is going to be
interesting enough,
so I'm not going to ask mine.
I think I'll just
see you afterwards.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: OK.
Well, boy.
Next question, yeah.
Yeah.
On the question of are we
creating an underclass,
I mean anymore than the
underclass we already have?
Again, I'm going to retreat
into I just don't know.
I think we're so new into
this flattening process
that it's very hard to
predict how it will come out.
And I think there's so many
political choices to be
made that it's very hard to say
anything categoric about that.
Charlie Rose asked me, who would
you like to read this book?
And I said, without
question, I'd
like President Bush
to read the book.
And I wasn't being cute at
all for a very simple reason.
Well, listened to it on tape
or whatever works for him.
[APPLAUSE]
They're so bad up here.
OK.
This front row is terrible.
OK.
But I really meant that because
in the sense that we don't have
three and a half years to waste,
we don't have three and a half
years-- this really gets
back to the question of--
to sit around and wait
and hope that someone
three and a half years
from now gets that better.
I really don't want to waste
three and a half years.
I think that we're
in a quiet crisis,
as Shirley Ann Jackson, the
head of Rensselaer Polytechnic,
describes it.
And she is of the people--
Shirley Ann Jackson is the
first African-American woman
to win a PhD in
physics from MIT.
And she was part of that
generation of scientists
and engineers who were
inspired by the moonshot
to go into science
and engineering.
So again, to repeat what Paul
Romer said, we're in a crisis
and a crisis is a
terrible thing to waste.
And so I would hate
to waste this crisis.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Every
time I talk to you,
I feel like I need to talk
to you for another 10 hours
to understand at this level.
It is an extraordinary vision
that you have laid out.
I'm sure you're
right and I'm glad--
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I
hope so because I
quoted Google an awful lot.
ERIC SCHMIDT: I'm really, really
glad that you were willing--
you're busy, you were willing to
come back here and talk to us.
Now, we wanted to present you
with the Google Web Accelerator
boomerang.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Wow.
ERIC SCHMIDT: And
the reason is, first
we're very proud
of this product,
it makes the
internet much faster
which is very important
in flattening.
But also, it's because
boomerangs always come back.
Now, I actually wanted
to do something unusual.
I wanted to ask one
person in the audience
to make some comments
or wrap up or generally
say whatever he
would like to do,
so I prepared the
microphone and I'm
going to present him with
a boomerang, as well.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Terrific.
ERIC SCHMIDT: And perhaps--
[APPLAUSE]
I'd like to give you a
I'm feeling lucky and--
ROBIN WILLIAMS: Thank you.
Thank you.
I have a very large
hard drive right now.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you on behalf of
the new German pope.
Oh, stand up on the stage?
There?
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
First of all, it's a flat world.
This is a Rubik's cube.
I was just wandering around
your building and going, Jesus,
you have no furniture.
So that will be the future in
a flat world, you won't sit
and you'll have
food every 100 feet.
What a wonderful thing.
This is basically an
aboriginal word processor.
In the old days, there were
people [ODD SPEECH SOUNDS].
That was the first
aboriginal modem.
[ODD SPEECH SOUNDS]
That was Miriam Makeba's
answering machine.
The folks up there have
been looking down on you
for the whole day going,
we're so much better than you.
And this is actually the
intestine for the building.
You don't know it, but
this is taking everything
that you take from every 100
feet, runs it through there,
and vents it out to you
over a period of time.
For me, I'm just
watching and enjoying.
Like he said, he was hoping
that Bush reads the book
or gets it on tape or at
least sees some pictures.
He's a simple man
and as he himself
said, is our children learning?
Which gets a lot of kids
excited about is they learning?
If you look up Bush in Google,
it's really pretty open-ended.
It's not a porn site.
I know many of you
were thinking that.
Even though Dick Cheney
sounds like, hmm.
Revenge of the south, really.
Do what I say now, George.
You will be my friend.
He's a good man.
I'm hoping that somehow that
he has an AI working with him.
He has GPS actually
on his desk that
tells him where certain
parts of the world are
and how to get there.
When machines start
talking to machines,
that will be a scary thing.
I had a Mercedes Benz that had
a phone that you could dial.
You'd speak out the number.
I would go, one.
It would go, two.
It was German, it was
always wanting more.
And it gave me
directions one day.
I wanted to get to
Marin County, it
directed me to basically
the middle of the Bay.
And if I could get
there, probably the car
would be going, [INAUDIBLE].
This is obviously great.
Does a company as
bright as you are need
to have your name that big?
You're up there going,
this is where we work.
We're special.
We have skills, we
have a search engine.
I love seeing that
globe out there.
Basically, it has all of those--
the-- then if you look
behind, you're like, where?
Sergei put it there, a
big gift for you all.
Big gift from Sergei to Google.
Sergei came here with
dream for search engine.
In Russia, search engine
was, where are pants?
Jeans over here.
But it's great.
You can see people
actually-- all the
places all over the world
that have electricity.
Not a lot of hits
in Africa right now.
[AFRICAN LANGUAGE SINGING] OK.
It's nice to have the tech
people in the front going,
when you talk about hardware?
Talk about mainframes
and accessing mainframes.
It is a good day to wonder why.
I actually called
Stephen Hawking's house.
Hello, this is Stephen Hawking.
Yeah, I'd like to
leave a message.
No, this is Stephen Hawking.
People get very
offended by that.
I don't know what I'm
doing following you.
For those, this is a
Freudian moment right here.
You have a ball.
I don't know what this is.
Even Magritte is going,
I would not paint it.
Read the book.
It's an exciting book for
those of you, obviously,
you're the tip of the culture.
The rest of us are
going, what do we do?
I hope I have a skill.
I hope that there's not somebody
in Bombay right now doing this.
I can do your act word for word.
Well, I can also
dance in your videos.
[FAKE INDIAN SPEECH]
You could be in
"Crouching Tiger,"
you would not [INAUDIBLE].
Watch now, you will learn.
I will dub you better than you.
Your culture is falling apart.
And even the English
are going, get ready.
Look at us, we have-- well,
look at the royal family.
It's basically "Deliverance"
staged by Fortnum & Mason.
You have to look at
them and realize,
there's a culture, a very
well-educated culture,
the royal family.
All of that money
and no dental plan.
That's some pretty ugly
people for being the head
of a nation going, hello.
I'm getting married.
Sorry.
The "New York
Times" [INAUDIBLE].
It's a good paper.
You've got new fact checkers.
Is this real?
I don't know.
There is a new Israeli web
server called Netanyahoo.
Or "You've Got Moyle."
Goigle, gentile
web server, goigle.
Well, thank you for
letting me riff up here
in front of people
with college degrees.
A lot of the engineers will
go up in the flowchart going,
two Jewish squid walk into
a bar or two Irishmen.
No, they'd never walk out.
It's like the two Irish
guys in the boat going,
oh, [INAUDIBLE], Bob.
I've got to piss.
I've got to take a piss.
He said, I want to
make a wish first.
All right.
Make a wish.
I wish the ocean was Guinness.
The ocean is Guinness.
And then the other one
says, you damn idiot,
what have you done that for?
He says, why, what
are you pissed off?
He said, no.
Where am I going to piss?
Shut up, [INAUDIBLE].
I wish us all good luck
with the German pope,
I just spoke briefly about this.
I was hoping--
I mean, obviously it
is an unusual thing
that his nickname
was Der Panzer Pope.
Obviously, the Swiss
guard is very happy
because finally
they get artillery.
I was hoping for maybe
a Brazilian pope.
I mean, Pope Raul
would be lovely.
And the nuns going
[FAKE BRAZILIAN SPEECH].
The African pope,
Pope [INAUDIBLE],
[FAKE AFRICAN SPEECH].
Or we can have an
African-American pope
and we call him Pope Diddy.
I got the bling, man.
Yeah, I've got my
ring [INAUDIBLE].
All my beeyotches, I like
to call my nun [INAUDIBLE],
even though they're
hear right now.
Now.
Look at my jewelry.
Yo, check the ermine.
I'm looking hot.
P. Diddy in the house
riding the Pope Mobile.
Boom, boom.
I guess I'm not going to
heaven, but what the hell.
If you've got a helicopter
waiting, I've got a hybrid.
For those of you that
have a hybrid, good luck.
It's basically a golf
cart on steroids.
It makes a noise when it backs
up so even deaf people go.
You'll all go home tonight and
go, what the fuck have I done?
I've stood in front of people
who have access to technology.
All right.
Hold on, let me take
a picture of you.
I actually saw a mobile phone
that didn't have a camera.
I went, oh, you sad bastard.
It's so crazy.
Now everyone has
these little headsets
and they're talking ha-ha.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Hold on.
I actually saw a guy who
was talking to himself
and he went, thank you.
Thank you for still being
out of your fucking mind.
Thank you.
How small will the
technology get?
Will it be like, OK, you
eventually get implants,
you're going, yeah,
hold on one second.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Hold on.
Yeah I'm getting a call.
Hold on, I've got call waiting.
Wait a minute.
I'm going to take a picture now.
I just took a picture.
I'm downloading-- oh, wait.
I'm getting your fax.
Hold on.
Thomas Friedman,
ladies and gentlemen.
[APPLAUSE]
ERIC SCHMIDT: Robin Williams.
Robin.
[APPLAUSE]
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: OK.
SERGEY BRIN: Eric was
complaining that my jokes TGIF
were getting stale so
he brought a ringer.
You don't have to get
Robin Williams, though.
Well, thank you very
much, Tom, for coming.
By the way, I thought because
your book came out shortly
after we launched the
satellite view on Maps,
I thought, wow, that was fast.
Right away he saw that and
he wrote the whole book,
"The World is Flat."
But now thanks to
him, we can delay
some of the work we were
going to do on Keyhole,
which is the 3D viewer.
I know that's not
necessary anymore.
Anyway, thank you very
much for coming by.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Pleasure.
SERGEY BRIN: It's
always a pleasure.
And round of applause
for Tom Friedman.
[APPLAUSE]
