In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink explores the rise of a new mindset. He was right. His prediction about our global society valuing R-directed thinking more than L-directed thinking were right. He published this book 11 years ago. This is the same year YouTube was founded. Pink’s novel is so relevant and reflective of today’s society. YouTube alone has created millions of jobs and billions of dollars. Not to mention all the other media giants like Apple, Twitter, and Facebook. It’s all because of the increased value of High Concept and High Touch capable thinkers and creators. The “right brain” people have become so dominant in popular culture in the last 10 years. It’s just crazy to actually see and read that someone predicted this right before it happened.
Pink not only saw the Conceptual age was coming, but he went as far to define the what the valuable mindset has become. The ability to “create artistic and emotional beauty, combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel invention, and to find joy in one’s self and to elect it in others”. The R-directed thinkers have already had such a major influence and impact on today’s global society and it’s only been 10 years. The first couple of things that come to mind is the legalization of marijuana, fight for rights for the LGBT community, and the increased amount of students pursuing creative degrees in college. The have also had a tremendous impact on pop culture and everything the “cool” kids wear, read, and listen to.
The chapter was pretty interesting simply because this is a time period that I currently live in and deal with every day. It was nice to read Pink’s opinion from 10 years ago and seeing how he was pretty accurate with his message. While reading I was thinking about how 10 years ago I was struggling to learn multiplication because I was distracted in class. All I would do was doodle and write stories. At the time, I thought I was a bad kid that wouldn’t end up anywhere in life because I preferred being creative over math. In reality, my distractions were preparing me to succeed for the Age of Abundance that I live in today.
In What is Design, Kenya Hara approaches Design from a historical point of view that I never truly thought about before. It was a little dry and that made it hard to read, but there were some interesting new perspectives. Hara showed that design is a basic human instinct. We all have preferences on how we want things to look. What looks good to one person, can look hideous to another. It’s crazy that he went all the way back in time to show that. All the way to when man first began to walk erect and their hands were now free. When I think of design, I think about some of my favorite artists and their aesthetics. I don’t think about how design has evolved over time to become what it is now.
Hara’s thought that design is omnipresent and is meant to provide new understandings was something that I felt like I always kind of knew, but never explicitly expressed to myself. He made design easier for me to understand and interpret.