2008-04-06: Age of the Right Brain

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NY Timea article on

[edit] Let Computers Compute. It’s the Age of the Right Brain.

"now that we’re hip-deep in what has been called both the “Creative Economy” and the “Conceptual Age,” no one can afford to ignore the artist within: the right hemisphere of the brain".

Each side of the brain plays its own role in cognition. The left side, home of the human language center, is the outspoken logical, linear half of the equation. The right side, home to spatial perception and nonverbal concepts, is the nonlinear, high-concept source of the imagination and of pleasure. The two function cheek-by-jowl, constantly sending signals back and forth through a bundle of 200 million to 300 million nerve fibers to help balance learning, analysis and communication throughout the brain

But now that computers can emulate many of the sequential skills of the brain’s left hemisphere — the part that sees the individual trees in a forest — the author Daniel Pink argues that it’s time for our imaginative right brain, which sees the entire forest all at once, to take center stage.

“These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human, ..it’s just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high-concept, high-touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape.”

That alternate way of thinking has traditionally been marginalized in corporate America, as it has been in the rest of our culture. Dr. Sperry, who had a doctorate in zoology, noted the prejudice in 1973 when he remarked: “Our educational system, as well as science in general, tends to neglect the nonverbal form of intellect. What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.”

There’s power in making career choices for fundamental reasons, such as doing something you love, instead of instrumental reasons, like hoping a job will be a steppingstone to something else. It’s a message Dr. Sperry seemed to understand when he accepted the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1981. “The great pleasure and feeling in my right brain,” he said, “is more than my left brain can find the words to tell you.

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.

RBH: Do you have to be right-brianed to get the meaning of ValueNetworks, emergence, collaboration...or its OK to use both brains?