| Conceptual Age | 2005-02-17 15:28 7 comments |
 by Flemming FunchArticle in Wired, Revenge of the Right Brain, by Daniel H. Pink, talks about how Right Brain qualities seem to be more and more what we need. Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent. And he goes on to explain that. I don't know if he makes a great case for it, or if The Conceptual Age is the best term. But, I agree, a different age is emerging, where it doesn't do it just to be rational and to have the right information. More dimensions are needed. And there's too much information, and not time enough to analyze it all rationally. So we have to resort to more effective methods of dealing with complexity. Which, interestingly, to a large degree is intuition, feelings, exploring patterns in artistic or playful ways, rather than just logically. The plus side could be that we'll tend to deal with the whole thing, rather than fragmented pieces of information. The minus side could be that we're more easily fooled, because we act on appearances and emotions, and don't get around to analyzing the facts at hand. So, different qualities than before become critical. Being able to know right from wrong, without analyzing the data. I.e. being in touch with your own intuition, your inherent abilities to know things, even in the absence of facts. Sometimes you can make better decisions if you don't let yourself be distracted by facts. But lots of people are very bad at it, and get distracted by superficial signs, to make decisions they wouldn't have if either they knew the facts or they were in sync with their own senses. And the Information Age isn't exactly going away, but rather transforming into something else. It won't be so much about having an edge by having access to better information than your competitors, as most information will be generally available. It will be more about what you do with masses of information than what you do with little chunks of it. More about the forest than the trees, more about the landscape of information than about the facts. Anyway, back to the guy's article, which ends like this: Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right. Cool. So, we could say it is a change of focus. What before was to look outside for work and jobs and positions, maybe becomes to go inside and be inspired to do what you're here to do. Which becomes successful if one at the same time connects up with the heartbeat of the bigger, complex society. Plugging into the zeitgeist, the desires, the ebbs and flows of human attention. Where before, what you did had rather little to do with neither YOU nor with what the world needed - that now becomes all important. That *I* am in it, and that it rides on some kind of wave within the state of the world. Don't know if I can come up with a better word for it. Integral Age. Complex Age. Or Virtual Age, but that gets into another angle. Or maybe Conceptual Age is actually pretty good, as it encompasses several of those aspects. What a concept. |