03/15/2004: 
Breaking News
Origin of Species
By Thomas Friedman, NY Times Op-Ed [retinal scan required]
Nandan Nilekani, C.E.O. of the Indian software giant Infosys, gave me a tour the other day of his company's wood-paneled global conference room in Bangalore. It looks a lot like a beautiful tiered classroom, with a massive wall-size screen at one end and cameras in the ceiling so that Infosys can hold a simultaneous global teleconference with its U.S. innovators, its Indian software designers and its Asian manufacturers. "We can have our whole global supply chain on the screen at the same time," holding a virtual meeting, explained Mr. Nilekani. The room's eight clocks tell the story: U.S. West, U.S. East, G.M.T., India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia.
As I looked at this, a thought popped into my head: Who else has such a global supply chain today? Of course: Al Qaeda. Indeed, these are the two basic responses to globalization: Infosys and Al Qaeda.
It's people like Friedman who make the Times the paper of record.
