Do you feel we are living in a post-idea world? An interesting and insightful opinion appeared in the section of Sunday Review of the New York Times on 8/14/2011 by Neal Gabler tried to answer why there is no more deep thinker and big idea (see link http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big-idea.html?_r=1). Of course, some great products from novel ideas like iPad, Kindle and Twitter already changed this world. But let’s be clear that Mr. Gabler defines the big idea as grand as ones generated by Charles Drew, John Keynes, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie etc. The idea should ignite debates and cause revolution. In a social networking era people care more about what their friends are doing at a particular moment. So many people are busy to update the status of their Facebook page. We have become information narcissists, so uninterested in anything outside ourselves and our friendship circle or in any tidbit we cannot share with them. The daily life becomes increasingly trivial and bold ideas are almost passé. Interestingly, when an investigative report on why we lost the war on cancer published in the Fortune magazine few years ago, one scientist blamed a “lack of good idea” as a possible reason. How possible this happen when you think that we are a most informed generation with trillions upon trillions of bytes information just a click away, why is there no big idea and good idea?
To make thing worse we not only lack those ideas, we are also badly lacking of imagination. Not long time ago one issue of a scientific journal elusively dedicated to prospect the future of science 50 or 100 years down the road. The reading really made me scratch my head. Why those articles, many written by prominent scientists just talk some things probably will happen next year or within few years. You will conclude that those authors are totally lack of imagination. I still remember the exciting when I saw “20000 Leagues Under the Sea”. Where are those people who can have such an exotic imagination and enrich our thinking?
As Neal Gabler rightly pointed out one reason is that people are drowning in information, with no time or desire to process it. All grand ideas need hard work and extensive study. They have to go through many cycles of hypothesizing and grand argument. It is true that this ocean of information drown many people. But it is also true the same powerful tools and information, not available short time ago, empower the deep thinker to do thing unimaginable before. In the same issue of Sunday Review the columnist Thomas Friedman said that the globalization/IT revolution is “super-empowering” individuals , enabling them to challenge hierarchies and traditional authority figures, from business to science to government. Sometimes the big idea is exciting and dangerous because it will overthrow the conventional wisdom. A truly good and big idea will certainly energize and elevate the whole play field. In addition, grand ideas most often open new fields and create new industries.
To effectively use those powerful tools one need to have a brand new mindset and totally different thinking. The most important thing we desperately need now is to liberate our imagination and think grand and boldly, like how to completely overcome cancer and find multiple ways to treat and prevent cancer.
We may look like living in a post-idea world, at least from the view of most people for their daily life, but we are truly living in a pre-dawn era because many grand ideas will appear, and appear rather sooner.
(This article is to response to “the Elusive Big Idea” by Neal Gabler in Sunday Review section of the New York Times on August 14, 2011. Published on 8/18/2011, First update on 8/19/2011, second update on 8/22/2011)
No comments:
Post a Comment