A Whole New Mess?

A few reflections on the first three chapters of Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind:

[Note: This entry is a work in progress.]

Pink's book centers on the idea that the post-information age economy will require right-brained thinking—i.e., a creative, synthetic approach that is qualitatively different from the past. Whereas past "progress" was attained through the agricultural, industrial and information revolutions, Pink now sees the beginning of a "conceptual age" in which less rigid, goal-directed thinking is more valuable than the old systematic approaches.

While the "three A's" that Pink identifies—Abundance, Asia, and Automation—have definitely transformed the world's economy, my question to him would be: Aren't these things unsustainable? Continued abundance has already wreaked havoc on the environment, Asia is already severely overpopulated, and automation—essentially a fuel-based phenomenon—is bumping up against the earth's environmental limits. If we move past these stages of development without questioning whether they really constituted progress, where's it all going to end? Is Pink's hypothesis about the conceptual age predicated on us continuing to push up against the limits of sustainability?