Fifteen years later, Tom Friedman gets it

In the early 1990s we discovered something called the Internet that would have as profound an effect as the printing press.

We began using the net to shop for low air fares. Soon, we were sending emails asking business associates on the other side of the world how many widgets they could ship to Baku by tomorrow. Scientists began reading important articles printed in obscure foreign language journals that had an English abstracts attached with instructions on how to translate the article into English.

So I think you’ll smile when I tell you New York Times columnist Tom Friedman announced today his discovery of the Internet. What’s more he used a whole column to share the news with his devoted Times’ readers. Here’s some it:

I was on my way from downtown Budapest to the airport the other day when my driver, Jozsef Bako, mentioned that if I had any friends who were planning to come to Hungary, they should just contact him through his Web site: www.fclimo.hu.

He explained that he could show people online all the different cars he has to offer and they could choose what they wanted.

"How much business do you get online?" I asked him. "About 20 to 25 percent," the communist-era-engineer-turned-limo-proprietor said. […]

Jozsef's online Hungarian limo company is one of many new business models I've come across lately that are clearly expanding the global economy in ways that are not visible to the naked eye. […]

I was recently interviewing Ramalinga Raju, chairman of India's Satyam Computer Services. […]

A short time later I was interviewing Katie Jacobs Stanton, a senior product manager at Google, and Krishna Bharat, founder of Google's India lab. […]

Last story. I'm in gray Newark, N.J., speaking to local businessmen. I meet Andy Astor … […]

No, Tom. Another “first person” tale isn’t necessary. We get your point.

Questions to you, Tom:

Why did it take you so long to discover the obvious?

Why do you think Times’ readers need to be told what almost all intelligent American’s already know?

And why do you think people pay extra money to Times Select in order to get columns like yours?

Friedman's entire discover column is here.