The Cognitive Age

David Brooks explains that eco­nomic change is not the prod­uct of glob­al­iza­tion, but rather a skills rev­o­lu­tion in the Cog­ni­tive Age:

The glob­al­iza­tion par­a­digm empha­sizes the fact that infor­ma­tion can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most impor­tant part of information’s jour­ney is the last few inches of the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the var­i­ous regions of the brain. Does the indi­vid­ual have the capac­ity to under­stand the infor­ma­tion? Does he or she have the train­ing to exploit it? Are there cul­tural assump­tions that dis­tort the way it is perceived?