"A Whole New Mind"

Some books are ground-breaking. Others read like inflated magazine articles from authors who fill pages with trite observations for the pleasure of charging $15 for the paperback of their musings. "A Whole New Mind" belongs to the second category. (I shudder to think it was once offered in hardcover, for which the publisher charged $25 or more.)

The author's thesis is that the era of left-brain dominance is gone and people now need to develop the right side of their brain. Goodbye lawyers, accountants, software engineers; hello designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers. The author lists the following three factors as having contributed to this situation:

• Abundance: "The prosperity [L-directed thinking] has unleashed has placed a premium on less rational, more R-Directed sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion."
• Asia: companies have been more and more knowledge work to Asia.
• Automation: routine tasks in many jobs are now turned over to computers.

Read entire blog post on Aurelie Thiele's blog, Thoughts on business, engineering and higher education