Howard Gardner: "Five Minds for the Future"

I have recently had the pleasure to read "Five Minds for the Future" by Howard Gardner, a professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. His book, "Multiple Intelligences" was featured on one of my previous posts.

In the "Five Minds," Howard Gardner addresses the need to cultivate the minds of tomorrow in this age of technology and globalization. He lists the five minds as follows:

1. The Disciplined Mind
2. The Synthesizing Mind
3. The Creating Mind
4. The Respectful mind
   
5. The Ethical Mind

He takes each of the five minds and discusses them at length, including the challenges that we face as we look at the future of education.

And why do we need to take a proactive stance? Gardner begins by pointing to the following facts:

• Individuals without one or more disciplines will not be able to succeed at any demanding workplace and will be restricted to menial tasks.
• Individuals without synthesizing capabilities will be overwhelmed by information and unable to make judicious decisions about personal or professional matters.
• Individuals without creating capacities will be replaced by computers and will drive away those who do have the creative spark.
• Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the commons.
• Individuals without ethics will yield a world devoid of decent workers and responsible citizens: none of us will want to live on that desolate planet.

Reading this book, I could not help but recall a recent TED video about the rapid progress of science and technology that will cause what the speaker, Juan Enriquez, calls the big "reboot":



Now... my take on all this?

I think if (that's a big if) we, as a global community, can achieve the delicate balance across the elements listed in the book, perhaps humanity still has a chance at a bright future. There's a lot of think about...

The age of technology and social media

Is it out of control? How do we (the pre Gen-Y or the "Net Generation") keep up with it all?

Here's an interesting video I saw posted here about where we are headed:

Our Internet Dependency

While I was trying to get inspired to write a worthy post, I stumbled upon the following Nokia ad with the tag line: "Welcome to the fourth screen."

Watch it if you haven't seen it already; it's only 2:22 long. It's simply brilliant. Can I hire these people to do my marketing?



Let's step back and take a look at this. They are selling the idea of dragging people out of their basements and into the streets so we can have interaction with real people. It is interesting that a way to accomplish this is to make a mini-screen that is portable, instead of actually encouraging interaction with real people as real people.

Let's take yet another step back and take a look at ourselves. There is so much truth in this picture. It makes me think. Are we slowly becoming (or have already become) people who are afraid of people? Are we becoming more and more isolated with the help of new technology? Are we becoming people who are so anti-conflict, anti-social, anti-failure and have such a fear of rejection that we would rather express ourselves and share ideas through the security blanket of a computer screen?

Or is the new technology actually helping us to reach out to people that we would not have dreamed of meeting otherwise? This Internet world, the world-wide web that I have become so attached to in such a short time... Is it really helping us? or is it actually hurting us?

I'd like to believe it is the former; because for now, it helps me stay connected to other thinkers and also my sanity.

My concluding thought is this: Just like anything else, new technology is only a tool.

No idea, concept, technology, or theory is good or bad in itself. It's what we make of it. Some will use it for good; some will use it for evil. Some will benefit positively; some will benefit negatively.

Ultimately, each of us has to think for ourselves and take responsibility for our own actions.