Book review
A Whole New Mind
Moving from the information age to the computer
age
Author: Daniel H Pink
Publisher: Riverhead Trade (2006)
Review by Donald Clark, Epic
Another chatty text from the author of Free Agent
Nation, who saw a future dominated by freelancers – what a
hideous thought! This book is similarly obsessive about a similarly
exaggerated and flawed idea. This time it’s a future dominated
by creative free-thinkers, artists, designers, storytellers and
big picture thinkers - what a ludicrous thought!
It’s all weak jargon like ‘high concept’ and
‘high touch’, based on weak science, especially his
musings on right and left-brain. Interesting that he bases his entire
thesis (the triumph of right-brainers) on brain science discovered
and examined by those analytic types (triumphant left-brainers)
he likes to denigrate. So ‘A whole new mind’ is actually
half a mind, the ‘right’ half. I could barely get past
the introduction which is a confusion of metaphors and new-age nonsense.
Pink would claim, of course, that I’m too left-brained to
see his point.
US gurus love lists and Pink is no exception. He gives us his SIX
essential, right-brain aptitudes:
- Design
- Story
- Symphony
- Empathy
- Play
- Meaning
This is yet another utopian diatribe about how technology, automation,
material abundance and outsourcing (to the third world of course)
will lead to the elimination of many types of work. The US is the
centre of Pink’s universe and his ‘we’re smart,
the rest of the world’s our sweatshop’ view would be
deeply offensive if it weren’t so stupid.
His arguments about outsourcing and automation are OK, but his
certainty about the consequences are flaky. Does he imagine that
the rest of the world will fail to capitalise on their new found
wealth? So India and China will simply sit back and accept their
role as the US’s second wave of slavery. I think not. The
US has a huge deficit, supported by China and other countries. It
may not have the ability to get out of its dependence on gas guzzling
and imports. Pink should travel more and he’d see that the
US, far from being the epicentre of creativity, is becoming a dull
and uniform place which much of the world is now rejecting.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he focused his platitudes on the
workplace or innovation, but his is The Clueless Manifesto for life,
yes I’m not joking, for life itself. And here’s the
good part - at the heart of the argument is the need for better
design. In an age of abundance it is design, he thinks, that will
differentiate the good from the bad. Well it ain’t design
that will cure AIDS, malaria and third world poverty. We may never
get to Mars, but in Pink’s world the spacesuits will look
great!
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