Post #4 Context Book- A Whole New Mind
A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink 2005
According to a Whole New Mind, three forces are changing our society, Abundance, Asia, and Automation. These forces are the necessary result of the Information Age brought to us by the left hemisphere of our brains. Our left brains use mathematics, the scientific method, and logical analysis and are responsible for
world prosperity, landing on the moon, Wii, better medicine, the cell phone, TV, cars, this word processing program, and the Whopper.
Abundance means there is an over supply of almost everything manufactured, including information; brands are almost indistinguishable and therefore prices trend relentlessly lower. Asia is short hand for the flow of jobs out of the developed nations to China and India where educated people do jobs at a fraction of our salaries. Automation is a catch all term for computing power and software that is reducing the number of jobs in many professions, replacing humans even in law and medicine and crushing chess champions. Where or will workers find new careers? The solution to the pressures of the Information Age lies in the transition to the Conceptual Age; it’s time to move from left brain jobs into right brain jobs.
Our right brains see the big picture, patterns, relationships, stories, humor, read faces and emotions, understand metaphors, and meaning. The left brain (hemisphere) is useful for a logical analysis of the world. The right brain is for a synthesis of the world around us. The left brain is sequential and linear; it sees the trees. The right brain makes leaps of insight, looks for patterns, and sees the forest.
Two of the three factors, abundance of information and automation are challenging libraries and librarians, pressuring us to redefine our identity to retain our jobs and institutions. It may be time to listen to Pink’s thesis and focus on the power and abilities of our right brains that express themselves in Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. Innovative designs set products apart and make them memorable and desirable and purchased. Stories, excite the imagination, are valuable teachers, and place our lives in larger and novel contexts. People gravitate toward good stories. We won’t cease being logical and scientific but we must empathize with our patrons, make libraries a place of play, reach out to patrons to discover and answer their information needs, create stories about our libraries and what they hold, redesign ourselves to stand out among the throng of information available. A Whole New Mind places LIB 2.0 in a larger context; that of a sea change in our society and also in the nature of our brains. The right brain is wired for LIB 2.0.
To adapt to change you must understand the change. We must help our users to prepare themselves for a changing society, to surf the changes rather than being carried away or drowned by them.
