Technology should improve lives on a personal level, or on a professional level. In the current time, technological advanced solutions are often used to simple human problems, best solved by practical, mechanical or human ’soft’ solutions.

One symptom of this is increasing engagement with screens in front of you, and reduced engagement with people. This is symptomatic of the younger Creative Generation.

If you are managing, working with or teaching this younger Creative Generation, it can seem they are difficult to reach.

Continuous Partial Attention

The article that piqued my attention this last week, regarding this, was the LA Times article that reported a number of Silicon Valley tech firms had dropped laptops, blackberry’s, phones and all manner of gadgets from meetings.

“All of our meetings got a lot more productive,” Wilkens said.

It’s not exactly attention deficit. Linda Stone, a software executive who worked for Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., calls it “continuous partial attention.” It stems from an intense desire to connect and be connected all of the time, or, in her words, to be “a live node on the network.”

LA Times, 31st March 2008

Generation Z & Y people I meet, and many of my own Generation X, do constitute the Creative Generation. But their attention is a multi-tasking, unfocused, continual partial attention. An attention drawn to a screen.

The Creative Generation is a term invented by 2thinknow in 2007, that we have noted has been taken up via various schools in creative programs. One such program is here – Creative Generation Queensland.

Symptoms of Creative Generation

Creative Generation is represented by generations increased lateral and creative approaches to complex problems or issues. Conversely, often this valuable creativity is reflected in a lack of focus.

Gadgets with wireless tend to mean that people can interact with others who are not in the room, or the matter in front of them.

This generation also think in terms of lateral ideas and connections, networks and nodes. Aristotlean structures of modernism is not them, it is more a web than a grid.

I am one of this Creative Generation, a transition member being only 33, but with training and skills in what is considered process and process design. Grid and Web, if you like.

However, for a majority of this Creative Generation, their lateral creativity is symptomatic of a lack of process.

Like many ‘older’ leaders of this Creative Generation, I will form the leadership group and set directions for younger members of the Creative Generation, a bridge between an aging society and a society in transition.

What the Creative Generation means…

This means we will need to devise new ways to work, and examine older ways to work in order to deal with this emerging lack of process.

We will also need to revive forgotten methods of learning. We will need to redress learning priorities.

And we will also need to examine the assumption that technological improvement leads to societal improvement, as years of industrialization have polluted our planet, and new information technology enables increased control methods for creativity.

As the transition from an industrial process and mechanical society to a post-industrial society, we will need to create new working methods, in tune with the zeitgeist of the times.

Keeping some gains, within a new paradigm

A large part of that will be examining real outcomes, and retaining some of the efficiency gains of Taylor-ism and Ford-ism, whilst embracing the new paradigm.

So we will need to give younger employees, and the new entrants to the workforce practical skills and tools to embrace the Creative Society that is the next paradigm of work, arts and culture.

Contact 2thinknow if you would like to know more about skills for a Creative Generation.

Well, this is true, in Germany, and much of Europe.

The ease of implementation of the Deutsche Bahn (D-Bahn) system, allows for the enquiry into, and booking of complex train routes.

Whilst no mechanical system is perfect, those with some human knowledge of conditions on the ground in Germany, can plan and map routes across Europe using the German website for D-Bahn.

German Trains Worldwide Benchmark

In public transport the Germans are leading the way. How?

Specific details of which trains are on which routes.

Reservations of long-distance seats.

Various frequent-traveller discount programs, like Bahncard.

E-ticketing for domestic trains, using a boarding pass tied to a credit card.

Mobility information before travel for the disabled or less mobile.

Predictable, accurate timetabling.

Consistent connections between trains.

Clean, mostly safe, trains.

Not always modern trains, but consistently well-maintained.

An increasingly integrated transport system.

Lest we just say, oh those Germans have always had good trains… Remember that they have had the massive expenditure of integrating all former East-German cities.

Integrating communist era rolling stock, signal systems and trains is something that was not easy. Such integration would not happen in other free-market economies like the UK or Australia, without mammoth mistakes and front-page disasters.

Leipzig, a Great Example of what’s possible in under 1 Generation

If you want to see what an excellent job the Germans have done, go to Leipzig.

Leipzig was ranked the 5th place Innovation City worldwide in the Global innovation Review 2007. Part of this is an ability to implement innovation, due to strong infrastructure support.

As a simple example, the World Cup was held in Leipzig venues, and was managed very well by all accounts of visitors.

20 years ago, even 5-10 years ago Leipzig was nowehere near as integrated.

2thinknow Research into German Systems

I am returning this April to Germany to research trains and IT integration, as is done in the German booking System for Deutsche Bahn, as well as the use of new technologies in air travel booking that the Germans are using.

Having been to every Australian city and many more in Europe and America, the closest rival to the German system is the French System, especially Eurostar & TGV.

In the Americas Boston and San Francisco have amongst the best public transport of major cities, by US standards. But Germany is ahead.

German’s World Class Trains

Germans should be the benchmark on integrated multi-function, consistent public transport.

Integrated, multi-function transport is increasingly important when many Governments are concerned about “emissions” from cars. Trains are more environmentally friendly in most cases, than individual journeys by car, or plane flights.

But more critically, public transport enables innovation by reducing the friction on trade, allowing free uninhibited movement of people, goods and services, and enhancing cultural exchange.

What is one reason why German Public Transport Works?

Notably, whilst Germany has private basis for some transport, their is a public mindedness operating, a sense of “for the public good” imbued in the system.

This focus, is a part of the cultural factors, that lead German systems to differ from Australian or UK systems. The Australia and UK approaches are typified by heavy outsourcing and confused, inept public planning, and poor ministerial oversight.

In Germany, functioning public transport is a critical component of their world-beating approach to technology-based innovation.

Germans recognize that environmentally, culturally and economically public transport adds value.

2thinknow have identified a number of factors that contribute to the success of a public transport system, through global analysis and comparisons of transport systems.

It is not just the technology, it is the broad integrated socio-cultural approach of the Germans to public transport, that makes them world-top-of-the-class in this field.

Economics is just theories. This is something not often enough remembered.

“(In the Great leap Forward) Mao launched a large number of large-scale but senseless projects, which achieved little, but took thousands of laborers away from the urgent task of growing food.

“At this time, the most popular economic theory, in both east and west, proposed that for a backward country to develop, it needed industry, and industry needed steel.”

– David Rooney: Guerrilla: Insurgents, patriots and terrorists from Sun Tzu to Bin Laden

In my first economics class (previously it was called commerce); I was 16, and we learnt about both free market and planned economies. As equals!

There is no such detailed chapters on planned economies in text books almost 2 decades later. I still remember learning the efficacy of 5-year plans. Dogma.

Eocnomics is often theory. Theory becomes dogma. Dogma becomes truth.

Dogma of Free Markets and Communism

So when you hear media commentators waxing lyrical about: economic growth, and how free markets deliver better outcomes, and the benefits of free trade it is easy to forget.

That although the opposite of Mao’s interventionism; free markets, unfettered and uncontrolled are not the sole creator of better societies.

The opposite of a disproved dogma is not the truth.

The dogma of free marketers and full freedom of choice, is so ingrained as ‘good’ many don’t question why social outcomes and social integration have been declining.

So what does create better societies?

It is undeniable that free-market economics are better at preventing starvation than central-committee-driven 5 year plans. The real reason for this is simple.

A bureaucratic hierarchy will not pass news up to the boss. And all committee’s have a boss whether recognized or not.

And especially if the boss is a dictator, likely to execute &/or torture you and your family, for failing to implement his or her plan properly.

If you had Stalin for a boss, or Mao, would you be the leader to tell them his plan is not working? Really? Well you’d be dead?

What communism lacks is a free press. Or free criticism. Or feedback.

Communism and the far left suffocates under the weight of its own propaganda. Communism is immoral and wrong. It has been recognized as extreme dogma.

But lately, the economic Right has pushed the debate so far Right, they are drowning under the weight of their own greed. Free markets are dogma, too.

Totally unregulated markets are about greed, and when the market stops, normal people get hurt.

So why do I worry about the west?

Most major economists, including even monetarist Milton Friedman, conclude that the government needs to regulate the economy.

Meanwhile, we have freedom to dress and eat and have sex with whom we like. Too often cultural secular freedoms are mixed up in our minds with economic freedoms.

So now many of us see it as freedom to be partying, drinking and engaging in boorish behavior. Of course this is spreading globally from the English-speaking West.

So cultural freedoms are pursued, instead of ensuring that our governments deliver good outcomes for families.

And we need to ensure our government deliver good outcomes for our families. We need our governments to be rewarded for good community behavior and punished by bad greed.

And too many governments are using free markets as an excuse to do nothing.

I doubt some of the treasurers around the world actually understand important economic principles.

Many economists I have talked to are dogma-pushers who argue their dogma and against rational basis for understanding markets.Their dogma becomes the only way.

Thankfully, the politicians lament of economics, just ‘take a bit of all theories’ looks like a counter-balance to economic dogma. Politicians are what save the world from economic dogma gone a bridge too far.

Balance is key. Free trade has strengths, and is a useful tool, but is not a panacea. Government planning has strengths, but is not a panacea.

We need a balance between Government and Private business. And a limit on corporate power.

We cannot exchange one dogma for another constantly. Pragmatism is needed. Some of the economy must be public, and some private.

CHRISTOPHER HIRE