Beige Thinking

Homo sapein sapein has made amazing leaps in the last 6000 years.  The rate of innovation in modern times is nothing less than astonishing. In the internet age a full technology cycle is now somewhere around 3 years. So much of this advance happened in western countries but somewhere in the last 10 years a fascinating new influence has infiltrated its way into western nations, including Australia. This influence has acted to suppress innovation, to deride original thought and to suggest instead that watching other people living in a house or fighting to rise to supremacy on a desert island is actually more enjoyable than learning, listening to music, reading a good book or spending time with good friends.

Those who seek to think and to contemplate a different way to do things are attacked. We have always, as a nation, had a culture of knocking down the tall poppy, but now we try to smother them in a beige coloured blanket. Try to speak of Sarte, Kant or Descartes and other foundations of western thought and one is likely to be asked “what team do they play for?”  Dare to speak of trying to solve issues like the developing global food crisis and one is likely to be dismissed as a doomsayer.. and the conversation returns to sport.

Beige thinking has led corporations to suggest (as was openly stated to me recently) that the next quarter’s profit margin is more important than “wasting money on risky innovation”. Beige business leaders attack the rights of their workers in order to sustain their own salaries.

Beige thinking has created an environment where public servants are more interested in spending money making sure a process is followed in preference to delivering real capabilities to the taxpayer. Beige thinking has created politicians who are more concerned with the next election than with developing a vision for the future and building the infrastructure to sustain it. Beige politicians respond with acrimony and personal attack to ideas that do not accord with their own or their parties’ and are seemingly  incapable of actually intelligently addressing the real issues that this country faces. Beige politicians close schools and clinics, thinking that reducing costs is more important than building minds and maintaining the health of the community.

Beige thinking does not welcome innovation (unless maybe to try and find new ways to extract money from the taxpayer, the customer or the shareholder). Australia is a nation that was built on innovation (look at how many things we can fix with a number eight piece of wire!), but somewhere in the last 10 years beige has taken us over.  Not only Australia, but the entire globe, faces a range of crisis like never before. Beige thinking is not going to take us anywhere...

Now where is that remote control...

About slade

Slade is an Enterprise Architect, Business Analyst and Project Manager with extensive experience in the Defence, National Security, Emergency Services and secure systems environment. Slade has been in the IT industry since 1988, and is experienced in systems engineering, systems architecture, systems integration, security assessment and development of sustainment frameworks for new systems. He is also a thought leader in human factors for the design of critical decision support systems and environments and the development of enterprise and solution level architecture for high information workload environments. Slade is the Director of EcoThought Pty Ltd