i'm over 50, i run my own .com company, and here is what i think

it's hard for older guys to compete with youthful energy and flexibility on it's own terms.

but it's not just harder, it's *impossible* for a mind that's less dimensionally complex (a youthful mind) to compete with a mind that's more dimensionally complex (a more mature mind) in a situation of chaos and complexity (like the one we are currently in, in other words)

not WHAT we know, but HOW we know, how we see - how we think. higher order intelligence can see problems, opportunities, connections and solutions that are invisible to less complex thinkers. in situations which demand higher order perspectives, it's hard to over-estimate the value of a human who can deliver them.

humans are evolving systems, our minds can continue to evolve higher complexity well into later life. one of the biggest shifts we can undergo typically happens at the mid life point, into (using the model of Dr Robert Kegan) 5th order cognitive complexity.

most of the tearaway successful tech. products of the current moment involve 5th order insight (apple, facebook etc). people who possess the higher order vision to interface IT with reality in radical new ways are unlikely to ever be out of work.

take time to reflect *deeply* on life and reality, do some personal development work (therapy, coaching, meditation, mindfulness exercises). just like building up your body in the gym, if you proactively take responsibility for the health of your own psychology it will grow in complexity and flourish.

phil

objective reality says steve jobs and apple make good products, because fact: people *choose* to buy them!

now, people like stallman can go into denial about that, slag off steve jobs, fail to analyse the success of apple, fail to acknowledge that there might be some deeper intelligence driving apple's customers purchase decisions

or it could say - what can we learn from this?

i've had linux on my desktop since the 90's, i have noticed how in that time it has never gone mainstream. why?

stallman is, in my opinion, part of a dying worldview. he thinks people buy specifications, want swiss-army knives of technology with "more" = "better"

i think there is a new worldview appearing right now (based on something called Integral thinking) which puts human meaning-making at the centre of the system and uses technology to create a "space" which will provide human experiences and empowerment that people will pay for. i think apple is one of the few tech companies awake to this worldivew. in my opinion, this worldview is about to make an impact of the scale the rational worldview did in the age of the enlightenment.

this new way of looking at things turns the old worldview inside out, instead of putting a beige box specification at the centre of the equation, it puts a living breathing human being at the centre of the equation. as a worldview, it's more productive, more fulfilling, more empowering. and yes - people want it, lust after it, pay money for it, radical and powerful newness has that effect on humans, evolution is sexy and irresistible.

i'd love to see linux sail into a radical new future! yes there are problems with what apple are doing but it's totally facile just to dismiss the human enthusiasm that emerges around their products and around steve job's work.

inside that human passion there is a voice, and as apple's bottom line demonstrates, there are rational reasons to pay attention to it's message.

when will people learn that attacking negative publicity just creates more of the "thing" you are attacking? :o)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

what we fight, we become, what you resist persists etc etc etc..

perhaps big, bold new ideas in terms of the current worldview and paragdim are indeed a bit thin on the ground.

but there is some very radical new thinking starting to appear right now, which is conducted from the post-rational perspectives that are starting to appear at the leading edge of culture. by "post-rational", i don't mean "irrational", but rather of a higher order of cognitive complexity than that required for basic rational thinking.

not only are integral perspectives sufficiently radical to turn the thinking of the current paradigm on it's head, they are starting to become increasingly visible in the success stories of the world. why is apple so successful? why did facebook's specific information architecture take the world by storm?

because integral perspectives are of a different paradigm to the prevailing (post enlightenment) worldview, they aren't generally visible though. you won't see them in the mainstream, in the status quo, or in the universities, any more than during the age of the enlightenment you would go to church to hear the leading edge scientific thinking.

anyone interested in integral, i'd recommend checking out "a theory of everything" by ken wilbur.

phil

these people already aren't "participate properly in a democratic system without supervision" in the sense that they are making irrational, emotional judgements which are being fashioned (or "manipulated" if you like to look at it more cynically) by those in society who are in positions of power and influence.

and guess who the powerful people are? by and large, the rational people, the critical thinkers. developmental level is a very big factor regarding how likely we are to occupy a position of power and influence in society.

example - the bosses of some companies are quite direct about telling their staff which political party they are "supposed" to vote for.

so actually - i am just shedding light on how it's ALREADY working in a sense. just trying to add an extra dimension in to our meaning-making, that of cultural evolution and individual levels of psychological development.

do we believe in evolution? do we believe in the science of developmental psychology? then why not make use these ways of knowings to make things work a bit better!

before everyone cries censorship, i think it's worth pointing out that everyone here reading this is likely to be a rational thinker, e.g. of a certain minimum level of psychological complexity.

do you all realize this is a specific developmental level? a level which, even in the developed world only perhaps 60 or 70% of adults reach? and outside the developed world, far fewer?

an attribute of this particular developmental level is a capacity to internally generate ethical judgement. in other words, rational thinkers do not need to be "protected" and are better served by being given free access to information and encouraged to make their own mind up.

not so for people below this developmental level, who may easily be swayed into unethical behaviour through emotional arguments. a society which does not make some effort to shield such people from content which might cause them to behave in antisocial ways is heading for trouble.

of course - an ideal solution would manage this without censoring those people in society capable of independent, critical thinking.

but considering that any society consists of humans at a variety of developmental levels is fairly important for looking at this in a rational and big picture way. at very least, developmental psychology should alert us to the fact this is a complex problem with no easy solutions and certainly no panacea solution.

the brain IS non-computable, non-simulatable. at least by us - look up godels incompleteness theorem. an information system may not know itself.