"Flat" World Syndrome

I am getting a little bugged that people associated with Infosys are adopting the horrendous "flat world" metaphor introduced by Tom Friedman like crazy.

Take a sample:

Nandan Nilekani
Stephen Pratt
Basab Pradhan [See the "About the Site" description in the side bar]

Infosys even has a "Think Flat" blog!

It seems to have become the next buzz-phrase after GDM. And it means nothing. Or if you want to be nice to Friedman, it really means everything that's the modern world.

And what good is a metaphor if we can twist it to mean anything and everything?