I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.
After my grandmother passed away, I felt the urge to take my camera to her flat. I knew this flat from my childhood in Tel Aviv. Going to this flat was like going abroad; there was a real feeling of traveling across Tel Aviv and ending up in Berlin.
By 'flat' I did not mean that the world is getting equal. I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before. That's why an Indian in Bangalore can take care of the office work of American doctors or read the X-rays of German hospitals.
In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.
When I first saw California, it was extraordinary. Because I came from old, black, dark England, still recovering from World War II. I grew up with bomb sites everywhere.
I grew up in a very small town which is remote even by Indian standards. I always dreamed of the world.
A lot of my world-view is formed by the places I've been.
I grew up in a small town in India, but through books I knew the world.
I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.
I was brought up in a flat in North London - virtually the last building in London, because north of us was countryside all the way to the coast, and south of us was non-stop London for 20 miles.