Technically, I'm not reading it yet. I'm listening to it, while I drive, as a book-on-CD. However, the information (and conjecture therein) is so compelling that I want to have it available as a reference.

The author discusses the differences between the thinking of people whose dominant cognitive¹ function is "left-brain" or "right-brain."

Left Brain		Right Brain
Logical Sequential Rational Analytical Objective Looks at parts		Random Intuitive Holistic Synthesizing Subjective Looks at wholes

Everyone's thought processes are a combination of left-brain and right-brain, but each person's "style" is dominated to some degree by one or the other.

The author's premise is that American culture - especially the economy - has been dominated by left-brained thinking. We have evolved from an agrarian economy to a blue-collar economy to a "knowledge worker" economy - all largely "left-brained." The problem is that those parts of the economy - the jobs - can be done faster by machines (including computers), and cheaper by workers in less-industrialized countries. Those jobs are gone from the USA, and will never return.

The right-brained jobs will grow in significance. The left-brained jobs will become more right-brained (or they will disappear).

Right-brained work cannot be exported. Also, right-brained work cannot be farmed out to cheap imported labor (such as computer programmers from countries where labor is cheap, but working in this country on H1-B visas (work permits). 15 years ago I earned $68,000 per year - right next to an H1-B foreigner who was thrilled to work for $24,000. Add in a $24,000 American "administrative assistant" to fill in the foreigner's cultural gaps, and the company can get passable production for a fraction of the price of one person who brings the whole package to the job.

My work was superior to his, but not 2.8x better than his. How do you suppose that worked out - especially in a left-brained economy that looks at discrete components of the job, rather than at the big picture.

Back to right-brained work.

Imagine an MD, e.g., an internal medicine specialist. People's innards are the same, whether in Chicago or Istanbul. Hospitals can (and do) get away with hiring 3rd-world physicians who work for less than American-born doctors. Traditional American medicine runs on left-brained thinking.

Now imagine a psychiatrist. How could a psychiatrist born, raised, and educated in Calcutta be effective dealing with the emotional issues of someone born, raised, and educated in Sacramento? Sticking with the psychiatrist ... Japan's culture is, by US standards, rather melancholy. Suicide is more common there than in the USA. That is in part because of the more widespread desperation among the people there, and in part because of the role of "honor." Some types of dishonor make suicide almost a cultural imperative. Can a Japanese shrink just off the boat, treat a suicidal person in the USA? I fear that the outcomes might not be good. Mental health medicine demands a right-brained approach.

American health care is moving in the direction of holistic medicine. Medical schools might well be recruiting right-brainers - poets, meditators - instead of scientists.

Computers - the epitome of left-brained functioning - can do much of what engineers do: strength calculations, process selection, cost estimating, and such. Computers cannot come up with the original idea. Computers cannot innovate.

The idea people, designers, innovators - the right-brained people - will thrive in spite of outsourcing, offshoring, mechanizing, computerizing, and H1-B-ing.

Given my thinking on such matters, this book is an excellent resource for me.

¹ cognition (n) the product of perception, learning, reasoning, and cultural influences.