Big Idea Daily | The Seventh Sense
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Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networksby Joshua Cooper Ramo |
“This book is for those who will have to build and manage machines that are smarter than humans, for those who will create a new network, and for all of us who want to turn the energies of a disruptive age to constructing an order that feels secure and just.”JOSHUA COOPER RAMO |
BIG IDEA
What Is the Seventh Sense?
FROM THE BOOK“The Seventh Sense, in short, is the ability to look at any object and see the way in which it is changed by connection.
Whether you are commanding an army, running a Fortune 500 company, planning a great work of art, or thinking about your children’s education, this skill marks an understanding of power now. It means the ability to contemplate not just the extraordinary features of modern life but also the quotidian—a soldier, a share of stock, a language—and immediately know that connection changes the nature of an object. A medical diagnostic machine is impressive; one that is connected to a database of information that can accelerate and improve or perfect a diagnosis is revolutionary. The act of linking our bodies, our cities, our ideas—everything, really—together introduces a genuinely new dynamic to our world. It creates hyperdense concentrations of power. It breeds fresh chances for complex and instant chaos. To follow the logic of the French philosopher Paul Virilio for a moment, ‘When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck. When you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash.’ Surely we can count on the network to invent the network accident—and many of them. The emergence of surprise, of tragedy, of wealth and hope will be more common now than in less revolutionary times. We all face possibilities and vulnerabilities we only dimly understand.”
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Brian's Notes
Let’s start by defining the Seventh Sense.
In short, it’s the ability to see the power of NETWORKS that create hyper-CONNECTIVITY in every (emphasis on every) aspect of our lives.
Those who develop this Seventh Sense—this ability to see the way everything is changed by connection—will have more power than those who don’t. Explaining why this is so important and helping us cultivate this Seventh Sense is, of course, what the book is all about.
Couple notes: Joshua makes the point again and again that we are living in REVOLUTIONARY times. Not kinda sorta interesting but REVOLUTIONARY.
The day before I read this book, I interviewed Pulitzer-prize winning writer Charles Duhigg (see Notes on The Power of Habit + Smarter Faster Better). He made the same point—remarking that our current era will be seen to be as disruptive as the agrarian and industrial revolutions.
Joshua tells us: “Centuries from now, our great-great-grandchildren will look back at our age and name it, as we have named the Enlightenment. Perhaps they will call this era the ‘Great Connection’ or the ‘Great Enmeshment’ or some such.”
Whatever our era will eventually be called, it is revolutionary. Never before has everything been so connected.
And, we need to remember that just as inventing a ship also invents the shipwreck, this connectivity comes with connectivity crashes. Although the book focuses primarily on global crashes, let’s take a quick look at how this era is negatively affecting us individually.
Big Ideas
01: THE SEVENTH SENSE
02: THE ILLNESS OF OUR ERA
03: PROPER EFFORT
04: PSYCH. HARD GATEKEEPING
05: COMPLICATED VS. COMPLEX
“Fluency in any second language in the future will be an arcane specialty. Better to teach the kids how to build an artificial intelligence program, or to debate the moral reasoning of Confucius and Socrates, than how to order dinner in another language.”JOSHUA COOPER RAMO |
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