Thank You For Being Late

Thank You For Being Late (2016), a self-help book by American journalist Thomas L. Friedman, explores contemporary agents of social, technological, and economic change, analyzing them and suggesting possible ways for individuals to capitalize on them as their frontiers only continue to accelerate. Friedman also provides critiques of different social and technological advents that might represent threats to the stability and health of human populations. His topics range between global education, employment, geopolitics, nationalism, and computing. The cumulative goal of Friedman’s book is to reframe how people think about, and shape, the environments they move through every day.

Friedman begins with a meditation on the increasing pace of the modern world. He recalls first realizing the extent of the phenomenon when he went to breakfast with a handful of friends, who all ended up being late; soon, he realized he was impulsively thanking them for causing him to wait in solitude. He argues that the year 2007 is a hallmark example of the proliferation of high technology. He looks with amazement on the invention of the smart device, which has brought unprecedented access to technology to people, and relates it to Moore’s Law, which forecasts the rate of technological change by capping the rate of the increase in transistor density necessary for faster computation. He terms this cloud technology explosion the “supernova.” At the same time, the year, with its unprecedented volume and intensity of natural disasters, signified the reality of climate change.

Next, Friedman turns to information flow, and how its acceleration affects human interconnectivity and globalization. He suggests that as corporations become better able to isolate and manipulate flows, their market value will become increasingly correlated to their prowess in this area. He suggests that some information flows are becoming too fast for our own good, using the Air Force as an example of an industry whose technologies, especially drone surveillance, have outstripped the rate of evolution of policy.



Friedman moves on to international relations in the time after the Cold War. Now, a state’s status and stability in geopolitics are caught up in its ability to follow trends and advances. This accelerating pace puts new stress on states, especially those without the resources to easily keep tabs and experiment. To suggest a way for the modern state to become more adaptable, he employs the analogy of the natural system: dynamic and continuously energized, the natural system consists of a multitude of tiny parts which all move in choreograph, uniting and parting according to instantaneous forces.

Friedman examines several outlying moral questions of human behavior now that the world is becoming so fluid and dynamic. Though he does not prescribe answers, he suggests that modern STEM education, while highly useful in a technological world, could take lessons from the liberal arts in how to humanize students, ensuring that their intelligence is applied well, rather than squandered on vacuous, overly capitalistic enterprises.

Friedman ends asking how we might promote feelings of calmness and stability in a world that is no longer stable. He discusses the benefits of community and other local forms of organization in quelling the anxiety that inevitably accompanies change. Moreover, he exhorts his audience to keep learning from the past, elevating the process of learning from history above more short-sighted or self-conscious process. He expresses anxiety about the future of America, calling it a majority-minority country increasingly dominated by groupthink and corporation-sponsored ideological homogeneity. Finally, he contends that humans need to learn; or, rather, re-learn, how to work together. It is inherently difficult for anyone when truths and conditions seem to be changing too fast to understand, but these changes are predicated on interpersonal interactions, which remain the core of human evolution. Thank You For Being Late thus promotes a contrarian view on America’s ideological direction, extolling the benefits of solitude and dissent despite deeply validating social dialogue.