Jason Soon linked to an hilarious attack on Thomas Friedman on Catallaxy some months ago, and my brother just sent me a link to an interesting John Kay column on entitled “The scam of those who see the future in today” which takes a casual and amusing sideswipe at Friedman.
A good anecdote is worth 1,000 statistics for a business audience (although a line that joins two points and then extends into the far distance is a useful prop). Thomas Friedman, author of the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs business book of the year in 2005, is master of this genre. With an unerring eye for current fad and striking observation, he has achieved an international reputation for prescience by telling people what is already happening.