Sunday, October 25, 2009

Not sure what to put here

I saw Daniel Pink on October 21st. I went to the second speaking, about the book itself. It was actually a very good presentation. Pink seemed to know his audience well, and was very comfortable with speaking. He said some very interesting things, but remained entertaining, mostly due to his humor. One thing that bothered me was that he really did not expand upon any of the ideas in the book. He outlined it very well with his "decade of reasearch in 60 seconds" or whatever the exact amount of time was, but he never expanded on it. This is all well and good, but for those of us that actually read the book, there wasn't much to take from the first half of the presentation. These are, of course, only my personal feelings, but I don't see how anyone else to read and retained the book could've heard anything new in the beginning of the presentation. The second problem arose with the questioning portion of the presentation. Perhaps this is just me, but it seemed that if you deciphered all of the statistics, and large words, and Pink's apparent need to repeat certain words up to 4 times in a row, you would find that he didn't actually answer any of the questions posed to him. What he did was simply qualify the questions, expand upon them, and then relate them to the topic. That one guy who threw a bunch of statistics about Indians becoming Accountants and how this proves L-Directed thinkings dominance (I think. I couldn't understand that guy), simply got a regurgitation of what we had been told. Pink didn't address any of his issues directly. I would've liked to pose a question myself, but the aforementioneed lack of closure, combined with the fact that it was late and I was still looking at a substantial drive back home, prompted me to withhold my opinion. As such, I'll simply put it here and see if anyone else has other thoughts (yes, I know he put his e-mail address up and I could ask him that way, but honestly I've forgotten it, and there's still that issue of him not directly answering questions to begin with. I'm sure I would get some jargon-infested reply that would ultimately say something like "you make a good point, but you're wrong"). Anyway, I beleive that the right-brain is not going to rule the world in the future. I beleive that (and I will try to avoid sounding sexist here because I promise that I am not) with the addition of women in the workforce, the values of the right-brain are becoming more accentuated. By this, I mean to say that women are, statistically speaking, more right-brain oriented than men. This is not my opinion, it is a fact. As such, with the addition of women in the work force in the past decades, we are now beginning to see a rising of their right-brain perspective in our day-to-day lives. I recall a passage about scented candles still existing. Pink says this is strange, since one would think the invention of the light-bulb would phase out candles. He cited this as an example of Design's importance. I respectfully disagree. The reason candles still exist is because of women (again, my opinion. Not sexist). My mother loves scented candles. Has them all over the house. My father couldn't care less. I would think this is the truth for most households. Men simply don't care as much about pretty things. Function is more important to men than is design. Women are not the same. As such, women are becoming more a force in the workplace and are achieving a more equal standing in terms of monetary distribution. Basically, since women now work, women now get a say in what gets bought. Understandably, things that appeal more to the right-brain (the feminine side) are now becoming more prominent. However, I believe that this is a limited trend. These right-brain ideas have been on the rise, but they will eventually reach a point where they are no longer the driving factor because eventually the spectrum will balance out as is always has. I am not saying that the age of right-brain thinking doesn't exist or that the right-brain isn't important. I am merely saying that the age of the right-brain has passed. Or rather, it is upon us, and soon will.

No comments: