Cognitive age

David Brooks' column (I find myself in surprising agreement with him much of the time) points out something really important about our current policy dialogue and a way in which it is stuck. He makes a distinction between globalization as a process, and how that affects American workers on the one hand and technological change that requires different cognitive capacities on the other. Calling this the "cognitive age," he says that our focus needs to be on skill building, rather than tweaking and critiquing trade agreements. The focus needs to be within not pointing fingers at foreigners.

While the business community, and to some extent the military, has focused on skill building for a long time, the policy community is behind -- not just in devising policies to develop and fund skill building for all, and at all levels, but in focusing on its own need for skill building --in the complex of institutions that develop, talk about and implement solutions to society's most pressing problems.

What those capacities are, the tools we already have to build them, and how important they are for solving our most complex problems going forward is the topic of my book.