breakfast first

The Rise of the Right (Hemisphere, that is)

Tonight I went to hear Daniel Pink talk about his new book, A Whole New Mind. The premise of the book is that the age of "left-brained" thinking is waning, as analytical tasks are being commoditized by automation and outsourcing. He argues that we're shifting away from the Information Age into what he calls the "Conceptual Age". What's forcing this is three things: abundance, Asia, and automation.

With abundance, he notes that our (I'm referring to Americans here) disposable income has risen steadily over the past fifty years, and yet our happiness has remained level. (I haven't read the book yet, but looking at the index I see that he references Martin Seligman in several places; I assume Pink is drawing on some of Seligman's research.)  "This gap is what interests me," he said, and it represents a massive business opportunity.

With Asia, he's referring of course to the availability of highly educated, cheap, and (in the case of India) English-speaking "knowledge workers". And automation is pretty clear.

The people and professions that will survive this shift are the ones who draw on right-brain skills: seeing the big picture, creativity, empathy, etc.  He identifies six "essential abilities" needed for this new age: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. (Design features very prominently; indeed, his tagline is "MFA is the new MBA".)

He was a very engaging speaker (not too surprising, given that he was a speechwriter for Al Gore) and put forth some compelling evidence. Of course, I was strongly in his camp (at least on the reasons driving the change) before I heard him speak. (Case in point: if you read the comments on my post about Television and Kids, you'll see that I talk about teaching our daughter Mandarin (or Cantonese), as soon as possible.) Hopefully the book will offer even more depth to the things he talked about tonight.

Goodbye...

Sadly, our friend Felicia's children's bookstore in West Seattle is closing. There was an obituary in the Seattle Times yesterday:

"It's a sign of the times that a community has to close its bookstore," [author Jane Yolen] said. "Tells you more than you want to know about our culture."

The legacy of Hullabaloo Books is that if you want a sense of community, you have to invest in it: make the trip to the store, pay a little more, instead of clicking a mouse.

It isn't as convenient or money-wise, but, over time, you build something.

It's been raised

Wow, I just learned that former co-worker Mark Harlan has written a book, Winning at Internet Poker for Dummies. Looks like it's due to be released in about a month. Congratulations, Mark!

In Search of Lost Time

I think it's fair to say that the education I received in high school was quite pitiful. Only three teachers stand out in my mind as good educators; the rest were essentially babysitters. They were so bad, in fact, that I realized how bad they were as a high school student. That's a bad sign -- when a disaffected punk says the teachers really aren't fit to teach, things have really gone south.

Anyway, one of the lowlights of my high school years is that, despite being in so-called Advanced English for three years (freshman to junior), I was never asked to read an entire book. Not once. Short stories, yes. A few essays, yes. Parts of a book sometimes, but never a complete book. Not even The Catcher in the Rye! Amazing.

As a result, I've read very few of the classics. One of the most embarassing moments of my life came on a date with Miss J while we were browsing around a bookstore and ran into the Cliffs Notes stand. Miss J picked one up and said, "I used to love checking off all of the titles of books that I've read on the inside cover. Let's do that now and compare!" She proceeded to check off the vast majority of the titles; I seem to recall getting about one and a half. Not exactly the way to impress my date.

Since I have a little more time on my hands (now that I am without commute) I've decided to put more of the classics into my reading diet in a vain but none-the-less worthwhile attempt to make up for lost time. I considered going about it in an organized fashion, following paths put forth in books such as The Well Educated Mind and The New Lifetime Reading Plan, but they're a little too structured for me at the moment, so I'm just winging it.

To kick things off, I read Oedipus the King by Sophocles. I knew the basic point -- Oedipus kills dad, marries mom -- but none of the plot. It is great stuff...even though you know how it's going to end, there are many twists and turns and the tension builds with every page you turn. When I finished, I couldn't believe I'd waited this many years to read a mere eighty pages. If you haven't read it either, you should consider it.

Brautigan everywhere

There seems to be a sudden little surge in Richard Brautigan's popularity. First, I randomly named this blog as a reference to a Brautigan book. On Sunday, I read that there's a new book out on Brautigan. And today, I read on librarian.net about the Library of Unwritten Books, similar to the library described in Brautigan's The Abortion.

It's uncanny.

Manufacturing Meat

To read: The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply, based on this review from the SF Chronicle.