Into the Imagination Age

Let Computers Compute. It's the Age of the Right Brain. (Rae-Dupree, NY Times)

An interesting article in the technology section of the NY Times this weekend seems to fit well with my last couple of posts on intuitive math skills and hemispheric differentiation in the brain. I'm wondering if we're encountering a 'paradigm shift' of sorts, from the Information Age into what might be called the Imagination Age. Reading the article reminded me of something I remember Steve Jobs saying during my time as a full-time Apple-centric computer consultant after the "Internet bubble" burst in 2000 - 2001, which I paraphrase here as "We'll have to innovate our way out of this." I doubt that many could argue with the success of Jobs' strategy. A few other examples are provided in the article, and I think the implications meld well with educational needs, too: while memorization isn't unimportant, what's most critical is that we teach our students to be creative and collaborative problem solvers. Given that many of our educational institutions are still stuck in the Industrial Age, and transitioning with significant difficulty into the Information Age, how quickly can we expect these systems to adapt to yet another paradigm shift?