In Daniel H. Pink’s “A Whole New Mind”, I was most intrigued about the argument on the value of high concept meanings, and how they are essential in a world of abundance. As our society progressed, and humans became so skilled at producing goods, the important question many businesses had to ask were “Can someone do it cheaper?” and “Can a computer do it faster?” But answering no to both is not all it would take to be a valued and successful person in this new world. For that to happen, they could create a high concept meaning that relates their work to the struggle of people in the world, like MBAs, who Pink states “are becoming the new blue-collar worker.” I found this conclusion very interesting because the structure of society that she describes seems so familiar and it makes total sense, but I was surprised to hear how extreme and flipped the world really is now, having switched from a left-brain economy to a right one.

In Hara Kenya’s “What is Design?”, her new perspective on design as an expression of world power and progress was very fascinating to me. Thinking of design as “acknowledgement of our own living world through making things and through communication”, and that by doing so it becomes a vehicle of progress, the examples throughout history become very apparent. Dating as far back as ancient Egypt and the Great Pyramids, new design innovations like the massive scale of the Giza pyramids act as a show of power and skill.