The Age of Unreasonby Charles Handy As creativity and education finally move up the political agenda, this book is well worth a (second) look. It's a wake-up call for the end of the century: if you put a frog in water and slowly heat it, the frog will eventually let itself be boiled to death. Handy's message is that we will not survive unless we respond to the radical way in which the world is changing. Changing demographics and rapid technological progress have brought us change which is so profound that it cannot be seen as part of an existing pattern. Handy argues that we have unparalleled opportunities to shape our future; that now is the time for bold imaginings in our private and public lives, for 'upside down' thinking which will affect not just how we work, but how we live. There are lots of examples of new ways of thinking and of potential operating models. Some of these, like portfolio working, have long been part of the infrastructure of the arts. In fact, the arts would seem uniquely well placed to take full advantage of Handy's ideas. This is a very readable book, engagingly written and broken into digestible chunks. It doesn't offer a detailed blueprint for living and working in the next century; it does offer masses of challenging, positive and stimulating food for thought.
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