Left Brain Revenge, Right Brain Liberation, Leisure Society

I've been predicting this shift for years. From the Wired article Revenge of the Right Brain:

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...

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

My prediction is that almost all left-only brained activities will be mostly automated within 10 years. Assuming we as a collective can implement a grass-roots, decentralized, location-based, wireless, open-source, open-spectrum, transparent accounting, reputation based, super-smart social-software, semantic, next-generation internet empowered barter system, along with extremely cheap connecting devices, a full-time leisure society will be ours. It may sound ridiculously utopian, and it is, but I think it will happen anyway. Why? Because hundreds of thousands of displaced left-brained computer programmers now loosing their jobs to this shift will be highly motivated out of self-interest to make it happen!! They will not allow the consumerist corporate machine to continue reaping profits at the expense of everyone else (right brained or otherwise as the author of the wired article assumes will continue as always). Nope, the corporate controlled market is on its last legs. Knowing they are the smartest generation to be replaced, the left-brained programmers will make sure they are the last. I'm extremely optimistic that a leisure society is nothing short of inevitable at this point. For more details see The Coming Leisure Society.

This leisure society won't come without a fight. You can see the battle lines being drawn with p2p, intellectual property, tax cuts for hummers and not hybrids, property right fanatics, environmental regulation role back, corporate power grabs and consolidation. That's just desperation you're seeing. The one thing all of these people have in common is a love for hierarchy, as long as they are at the top of that hierarchy. But as Dlight has so eloquent said, centralized control hierarchies cannot withstand the force of millions of networked individuals working towards their own liberation.

So the author is right, the future will be led by the right brain - the dreamer, poets, artists will propel us along a future of never ending creation, novelty, sensual delight and joy.

Welcome to Utopia folks. It's almost here. How long from now? About 10 years tops.

Posted by paul at February 1, 2005 01:09 AM | TrackBack