In the Pink

I wrote a while back that with advances in technology and with cheap international outsourcing that the only two things that can't be done by computers or by those in India for $5 an hour is what we create ourselves and what has to be done locally. Art and nursing care. Music and police work. You get the idea.

So I get my Wired magazine for the month and lo and behold there is an by a guy named Daniel Pink who says the same, only way better than I could:

- Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

- 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.

- Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

- To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.


First, what great writing. Second, what great thinking. And not just because I agree. The title of his article is "Revenge of the Right Brain," which is adapted from his new but not yet released book, "A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age."

I don't think it should be that people abandon their left-brained gig. But rather do both. Which is part of the reason I'm busy exploring all this painting stuff...

I once worked for 3 to 6 months at a stretch on software that I would sell. Afterwards, there was tech support to provide and upgrades and so on. My price on the software I would sell? Roughly $29.95. Depended on the software.

But I can paint and work for three weeks on a painting, the prints of which can sell for $19.95, and best of all - there is no tech support after the sale. I just need to work to be very good and I need to market it.

Smarter, not harder. And right-brained output is tougher for someone else to reproduce.

Some guy once said something like "Periods of tranquility are not periods of production. Mankind needs to be stirred up." Taking 3-6 months to produce anything, left- or right-brained, is a non-starter in our very fast world. We have to be prolific. And personal. And open, transparent, linked, a bit sensational, niched... But mostly prolific. Whatever we do, we have to do a lot of it.