It’s summertime, and that means time for summer reading. This summer, as always, I welcome suggestions on rounding out my reading list. Last summer I was all about the classics. Jack Kerouac. Ernest Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald. This summer I’m focusing on the future, instead of the past. So two things: 1) how our existence will be in the time ahead and 2) bettering myself for the future.

I started, and am nearly halfway through, “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel H. Pink. It’s about how the Industrial Age favored left-brain dominated thinking – analysis, calculation, sequence – and how the new age we’re in, the Conceptual Age, favors right-brain dominated thinking – innovation, creativity, design. Jobs are quickly heading overseas or being replaced by computers, and the way to keep your job is to bring something to the table a computer or underpaid foreigner can’t – creativity.

Don’t worry; it’s not an argument for the dismissal of logic. Rather, it’s a case for both left- and right-brained dominated thinking to be a part of our everyday existence. Not just utility and function, but beauty and experience. This especially appeals to me, as I am part of a generation who doesn’t just want to make a phone call, we want a full experience with our phones – customizing with colors and ringtones and music to our hearts desires. We don’t just want to own a pair of shoes, we want them branded with our own designs and wording.

It’s the future.