Year: 2005

Flat world

It’s a flat world after all. Thomas Freidman on Globalization, Bangalore, …

Second, the Netscape stock offering triggered the dot-com boom, which triggered the dot-com bubble, which triggered the massive overinvestment of billions of dollars in fiber-optic telecommunications cable. That overinvestment, by companies like Global Crossing, resulted in the willy-nilly creation of a global undersea-underground fiber network, which in turn drove down the cost of transmitting voices, data and images to practically zero, which in turn accidentally made Boston, Bangalore and Beijing next-door neighbors overnight.

Yes, crazy overinvestment can be good. The overinvestment in railroads turned out to be a great boon for the American economy. ‘But the railroad overinvestment was confined to your own country and so, too, were the benefits,’ Singh said. In the case of the digital railroads, ‘it was the foreigners who benefited.’ India got a free ride.

The invention of the Hindu

The invention of the Hindu.

Hinduism is largely a fiction, formulated in the 18th and 19th centuries out of a multiplicity of sub-continental religions, and enthusiastically endorsed by Indian modernisers. Unlike Muslims, Hindus have tended to borrow more than reject, and it has now been reconfigured as a global rival to the big three monotheisms. In the process, it has abandoned the tradition of toleration which lie in its true origins.