Sorry but, I'm really annoyed.

All I can think as I’m reading this Daniel Pink book is, who the hell is this guy? What planet is he from? Oh yeah, Washington, DC. I lived there too. It’s a freaking bubble and everyone and their mother and all of their friends are rich and white, oh yeah except for those other people with darker skin that live in the ghetto in DC and can’t get proper public education. But the whiteys don’t ever see those people cause, you know, they’re conveniently gentrifying them into smaller and smaller corners of DC or into the suburbs. (Note: this is where our country's laws get made.)

Seriously, it’s been a while since I’ve read a book that I can think of so many “isms” to describe with. I hate to sound like the typical activist here, but this guy has no regard whatsoever to history, race, class, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, nothing. Since when are all Americans wealthy and tired of mundane tech jobs and can afford to go into the arts for that supposedly popular MFA? No wait, since when can they all afford to get a college degree? Since when have we begun to measure jobs by side-of-brain usage? ...

Let’s start at the beginning. I find his stupid reliance on left and right side brains really problematic. He himself states that both kinds of skill sets (sequential/practical and imaginative/contextual) use both sides of the brain, only one is used more than the other. And, I’ve read research, though I can’t quote it here now, that has shown that this isn’t even necessarily the case, and that things are a lot more complicated than just sides of brain.

But regardless, onto the next point. Since when has outsourcing of American jobs been related to brain sides? I mean, and excuse my language here but, what the fuck? What kind of a racist comment is it to say that Asians do our left-side-brain work for cheaper, so we send it over there to do for us? And meanwhile, us “smart” Americans can use are intelligence skills to move us into the Conceptual Age?! Last I checked, American students were generally way dumber than lots of foreign kids. I’m from Hungary, and not to boast or anything (it wasn’t up to me), but when I moved to the US (to Fairfax County, Northern Virginia, constantly battling Orange County for the richest county in the country) in 5th grade, my class in Hungary was getting ready to start chemistry and trigonometry, while my new US class was introducing multiplication, having mastered addition and subtraction over the last 4 freaking years.

Anyway, what an insult to Asians to imply that they, or the rest of the world outside of the US for that matter, can’t do “R-Directed” work as well as Americans can. Since when? Most of our inventors in this country are foreign!

Next: Pink seems to also be very proud of “fibre” optic cables. It’s actually spelled “fiber” for those of us who actually know a little bit about them. Anyway, Pink is so happy with fiber because now, those silly Indians can do our L-Directed jobs for us and, “thanks for the miracle of fibre-optic cables” (56), their brain work can quickly be zapped back to the US and shared with the people this country.

A little thing about fiber: Pink is right, it’s really awesome. It’s way faster than coaxial cable and has virtually unlimited bandwidth. Sadly, it’s currently available in parts of the country where either 1) cities have had money to dig up their streets and lay it, or, more common, 2) telecom companies have laid it for them. As a result of cable providers generally discriminating on where they decide to offer service (i.e. where it will profit them), fiber is still very much only available in areas of the country that are generally wealthier. Rural areas not only don’t have fiber, they don’t even have coaxial cable because telecom companies don’t want to pay to build the infrastructure if not a lot of people are going to be using it. So rural people are still using DSL or satellite (the former slow, the latter really expensive and slow) or dialup. So much for the miracle of “fibre” to connect us to the rest of the world.

Perhaps this stuff about fiber is neither here nor there. But it, and the rest of the stuff I’ve mentioned, shows that Pink has no regard to inequalities in this country and the world, and he makes no attempt to contextualize what he is talking about. He seems completely comfortable with the upper and upper-middle classes taking over and running the show, letting the rest of this country and the rest of the world to sort of pick up the slack and fend for themselves in their boring "Non-Conceptual Ages." SO last season!

High concept and high touch my ass. Tell that to a person living in Mali. Or if you’d rather not venture out of your hometown, tell it to a person living in Southeast DC. He’ll punch you in the face. Like I would if I met you.

PS. I thought Pink might enjoy this blog.