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Finding my first puzzle pieces I had realized I had been reading the wrong kind subject in books for an answer to my question as to why my industry was always in turmoil. If I sought to understand why I needed to read books on economics. Though I had majored in history at the University of Maryland, I had also taken some economics as well therefore I didn't have to start completely from scratch for this leg of the research. Economics had interested me but the father of a childhood friend of mine had gotten a degree in economics and always said that is was the study of nothing. I had left that interest alone based only on the resonance of that one comment from when I was around 10 years old. What I realized I was in fact seeking was a macro-economic model which described the causes and effects for a frenzy phase in past epochs. If you think of the 1920's for instance you can see the parallels in the US stock market between the roaring twenties and the 1990's. Huge growth followed by a big pop when the growth had temporarily crashed.
My first few books on macroeconomics were merely directional finders from Amazon. Then I got one which dialed me into a model which was exactly what I sought. The book was titled: As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution. In that book the authors, Freeman and Louca, laid out a new concept for me – economic long waves. In the book they modeled what are long waves or Kondratievs which show they cycles which technology has gone through since the Industrial Revolution began. Now knowing what I was looking for I struck gold about six months later when Carlota Perez published: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. Her refinement of the long wave model reproduced past and current events in perfect high fidelity. I read and reread her book many times. I read several other books on technology development which validated the model as those authors laid out distinct repetitive cycles which every technology undergoes for invention, refinement and maturation. Though those books did not reference long waves – the long waves were clearly visible surrounding their models. The book : Design Rules Volume 1: The Power of modularity is a very good example of this but there are others such as Systems Thinking: Managing chaos and complexity and the classic The Inovator's Dilemma: Why new technologies cause great firms to fail which also served to independently validate the long waves model. I could answer for the first time why my industry was always in tumult and more importantly could answer the question as to what time it was for my industry. What was coming, what was required to compete and how to differentiate a portfolio of services. I then spent a year integrating Perez's refinement for long waves into my business plans and strategies. Where I worked previously no one was interested in the model or its application. I left that company and went back to the company where I had come from. It was the strategic thinking based on the model which was the vehicle which enabled such an atypical move.
I had taken a different kind of position on my return. Though for a time I had management responsibilities, I was now essentially focused on I/T services strategy. This allowed me more time to define and apply the model for what was needed. My boss has tremendous business acumen and is a very intelligent person. He understood what the implications of the model were immediately but when he spoke of it to his peers they would say things like, “oh god, we're not going to talk about Klondike waves again are we?” So it took a little over a year to actually get the refined model bolted into the business strategy structurally.
It was as a result of having found the puzzle piece on long waves that my spirituality took another imperceptible step forward in 2004. Driving home from a business trip where the model had been green lighted for use as the foundation for our strategy I began ticking through a list of things required to stand up the strategy. I worked all the way to back to the foundation – the long waves, when a thought popped into my mind as to whether or not long waves could be validated back prior to the industrial age. I mean technology is not new for humanity or unique to the industrial age. We have been utilizing technology since the inception of the human family. My mind pondered this thought for a few minutes. Had I mentioned this thought at work I would have been laughed straight out of the business, so I dismissed the idea for the time being.
When the plans for our summer vacation were put together I decided to get some books to look into the idea I had when driving home from that business trip. Since no one has ever written such a book on long waves prior to the industrial age, I had to use another very different set of books. The first set was on subject of archeology. I had reasoned that since the hunter-gatherer age was our first human economic age, I should start there. Humanities second major economic age was the agricultural age (from 10,000 years ago to 1770AD). Since all of the major religions came into existence during the agricultural age, I reasoned histories surrounding their rise might give me some insight there for that age again since no histories of the agricultural age have written without attributing any technology or economics to other factors, all of which would not be long waves.
This time I was lucky right from the moment I stepped into my beach chair with those books. The first book was Richard Leakey's Origins Reconsidered. The book was a great overview of evolution. I was not astonished by the thinking but it put me in the mental zone for the second book by Carl Sagan. The Dragon's of Eden provided a wonderful overview of the evolution of life on earth from the beginning up through early humans. Of particular interest for me was Sagan's explanation of Paul D. MacLean's triune brain theory, which he supported with lab tests on brain injuries.
MacLean was one of the first research directors for NIHD. The data from his experiments gave him an understanding for the evolution of the human brain. The core of the human brain he called the R-complex, which evolved in the Triassic epoch and is shared with all reptiles. That portion of the brain provides for automatic response: breathing, sensations such as the breeze on your skin and the fight or flight response to danger. The second brain surrounding the R-complex is the mid-brain, which evolved in the Jurassic epoch and is called the limbic system. The limbic system houses and regulates your mood and memory to a large extent and is shared with older mammals such as dogs and mice. The final evolution of our brain was the neocortex which evolved in the Eocene & Oligocene epochs which houses our analytical center. It regulates logic and thought and is shared with other primates such as monkeys and chimpanzees. The takeaway from MacLean's triune brain model is a very logical progression from other life forms to humans.
More importantly it dovetailed right into Leakey's book to answer a question which had been rolling around in the background of mind for years. Why did humans develop this incredible culture when other animals had not? The standard answer had been that God had created us in his image but even when they literally pounded that answer into our heads I had rejected it without really having had another explanation than the rote one “taught” to us. Because humans had evolved the large neocortex area in our brains we possessed enormous analytical centers relative to other animals. You can see the effect of the triune brain and the expansion of the neocortex in the following image: |
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The area above our eyes, which has grown tremendously large relative to our ancestors, had produced the reasoning human centers responsible for the world we live in.