The Conceptual Age

The Conceptual Age

Society has gone through stages, each one spurred by the want or need of improving life. At the beginning of time, society was based on hunting and gathering and then it advanced to the agricultural age. Then we moved into the industrial age, and recently, the information age. But now we are heading into a new stage, the Conceptual age. To adjust to and prosper in this age, people will need to develop skills in creating artistic and emotional beauty, in detecting patterns and opportunities, in crafting a satisfying narrative, and in combining seemingly unrelated ideas into a novel invention, and people will also need the ability to empathize, to understand subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the common everyday things, in pursuit of purpose and meaning. Creative intellectuals will flourish in the new conceptual age because material abundance, globalization, and new technologies are making the information age's peoples' skills insufficient in a society that is searching to add purpose and meaning.

Abundance in social, economic, and cultural life is making qualities such as uniqueness, beauty, spirituality, or emotion a requirement of prosperity. The standard of living has risen dramatically in just the past couple of generations. It used to be that owning a home and a car was an achievement that signaled a successful life. Now it is common for any person with a license to own a car, or even more than one car. The self-storage industry is growing also, because people need even more space to house all their extra stuff. Abundance is evident in the amount of waste we produce, which America has more of than any other country, because we throw away many things we cannot store. So it is no longer enough for something to be reasonably priced and functional. Products require qualities such as uniqueness, beauty, spirituality, or emotion to make them stand out. People are being liberated by their prosperity but are not fulfilled by it; they are resolving this paradox by searching for meaning.

As more and more white-collar work is shipped overseas, globalization generates more and more controversy and anxiety. Outsourcing in multinational companies is necessary to compete in the new global economy. In the US, a computer programmer's salary can be upward of $70,000 a year, whereas in India, a twenty-something can do the same high-tech work just as well and maybe even faster for about $15,000 a year. India, and other nations as well, are continually producing millions of extremely capable knowledgeable workers. So it is only logical for companies to send standardized, routine financial analysis, radiology, and computer programming work where it can be done cheaper and can be delivered to clients instantly through advanced technology. It happened in the industrial age, where production jobs moved overseas, and similarly workers now will have to learn new skills, which are central to the conceptual age, that cannot be outsourced overseas. These skills that cannot be done better and cheaper overseas would involve establishing relationships, solving great challenges, and coming up with the big picture.

Increasingly, work that depends heavily on rule-based logic, calculation, and sequential thinking that is done by these knowledgeable workers will be completely done by computers, which are faster and more competent. Even the smartest and most skilled person can crack under pressure, make mistakes, and sulk over losses. This is affecting any career that involves routines, like computer programmers, physicians, lawyers, and accountants, which are all esteemed professions. To prove their worth, these professionals will have to develop services that a computer cannot provide. This happened in the industrial age; where machines could do something better than humans, and as a result human dignity was sacrificed. In the industrial age machines replaced human physical labor, and in the conceptual age, computers are replacing human brains. People are going to have to deal with being replaced and go beyond what a computer can do by adding creativity to the big picture. Even in the medical field, people can diagnose their own problems with information available online and with a computer's logical decision tree. So physicians need to provide a service that computers do not, which is empathetic advisement on patients' options. In the legal profession, new advice and informational services are becoming cheaply available. Lawyers will be forced to lower their rates and provide services software cannot, like counseling, mediation, and of course, trial work.

People are increasingly interested in finding meaning in their lives. Making money alone does not provide for a joyous life, and in this age of abundance