[Music] what's a great example of a 21st century mind in action I heard about a 25-year-old woman us satellites to predict drought I really like that story about the mechanic who developed the our question prompted all these responses about amazing technological breakthroughs and Innovations and then we heard one story that opened a door to a new way of thinking it's about an art professor in Los Angeles named Mary Beth who was watching the news around the Ebola crisis in West Africa and thought wait a second these patients must be so scared and lonely and the
only humans they're seeing are covered in these huge imposing suits and every report that I heard on the bow epidemic they mentioned the frightening suits I imagined what would it be like to be a patient to not see a person's face for days on in I found myself almost saying out loud why don't they put photos on the outside why don't they just put photos on and finally I thought maybe I'm the one who's meant to do that and we were so moved because the way Mary best story unfolds shines a light on a larger
shift we're seeing in the world world as Technologies are rapidly changing How We Do Everything certain skills are becoming less valuable the need to memorize perform routine tasks and soon even the need to drive While others are becoming more valuable so what exactly are the skills that prepare us for a world that's constantly [Music] changing of course there's a lot of conversation around this question what should we be focusing on in school in life there's the importance of science technology engineering and math I like to throw in art and Humanities so not stem not steam
but Steam and there's also amazing new evidence-based research proving that there's another set of skills we need that aren't in textbooks yet so as we learned more about Mary best story and delve deep into how it connected to all the different schools of thought the hard skills the soft skills the life skills the cognitive the non-cognitive we found five skills strengths qualities whatever you want to call them and yes it's another list that seemed to be at the core of thriving in today's world so if you want to know what they are or how Mary
best story relates to any of them you're already practicing the first one curiosity the news kept puncturing my Consciousness I started reading more extensively about West African culture about pho viruses I mentally just started problem solving in our 247 world where we're inundated with information from all directions 3 billion Google searches a day 300,000 tweets every minute curiosity is the difference between skimming the surface of all those links and truly engaging and not just looking for what's already out there but also for ideas that aren't already out there new research from UC Davis shows that
when our curiosity is peaked the brain activates regions associated with learning memory and even reward it basically turns our minds into very happy sponges and while there's a lot of fear out there that Technologies are replacing what we do our curiosity is one of the things that makes humans unique from machines but not from animals machines follow rules very well follow a designated pathway but our minds are built to constantly adapt to ask questions that create unexpected Pathways Pathways that lead to even more curios it and those questions you ask and Pathways you open also
lead to creativity our second skill and my immediate response was to look around me take what was available and repurpose it for that use we often think about creativity as part of art but it's important in absolutely every context taking different research and finding connections a new synthesis a new idea Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner says creativity is liberating human energy and in today's world creativity is so key because you have so much information at your fingertips that getting that information is not the biggest challenge in fact more and more the world is going to expect
that you're curious enough to do that it's how you bring your own unique perspective to connect ideas in new ways that's going to differentiate you research now shows that some of your most creative thoughts happen when your mind is left to wander when you Daydream exercise even when you're doing the dishes but no matter how many creative ideas you have you have to do something with them which brings us to the third skill we need in today's world taking initiative I wrote scores of letters to anybody that I could think of many responded positively in
fact most responded positively but getting someone to commit to partner was the most difficult part if you don't take initiative your ideas will float into a sea of billions of thoughts being generated around you every day and in order to begin and get something done we use an incredible amount of things like intuition judgment Discerning which ideas to act on knowing when to shift directions or approach taking initiative also means knowing when to reach out to people what would an artist think about your idea what about a scientist what about somebody from another country which
is really about multi-disciplinary thinking I reached out to epidemiologists doctors Public Health NOS even anthropologists asking what do you think of this idea how could I improve it there's so much talk today about about how we're distracted by multitasking but what we really need to be doing more of is multi- asking across ages races genders cultures and disciplines we think of the Mind as private and there's so much value in Solo thinking but there are also so many ways that the mind is public this communal organ to communicate to transfer ideas and to collaborate in
collaborating just like everything else about being human can be messy it takes understanding what you know and what you don't know no so the next time that you're collaborating how can you make sure that your mind is really open to being changed it really comes down to empathy I imagine what it would be like to be a patient to be taken away from your family taken away by somebody wearing this frightening suit and then there's the view from the healthcare workers side you have your human tool to have patients accept your care gone MIT researcher
Rebecca Sach suggests that this skill of sensing the motives and feelings of others really begins developing around the age of five and has the potential to grow stronger throughout life but just like the rest of these skills empathy takes practice looking people in the eye truly trying to understand where they're coming from taking the time to know the names and stories of people you interact with daily and it seems as our world has become more more and more connected we have to remember that connecting broadly is meaningless unless we connect deeply in fact a three
decades long study of college students has found that empathy levels in our culture have dropped dramatically it's clearly time to refocus empathy is at the core of our ability to communicate to work together to be part of our rapidly changing World which is where you come in for most of human history we survive by creating an agricultural economy 200 years ago we shifted to an industrial economy just 50 years ago we initiated the knowledge economy and today we're approaching another seismic shift some people are calling the human economy so here we talked to scientists friends
researchers Mary Beth and here's the part that we found Most Fascinating and hopeful the skills we need most in today's world in any profession will boil down to Being Human basically the qualities that machines don't [Music] have eventually through hundreds of connections obstacles and breakthroughs Mary Beth was introduced to a doctor in Liberia who landed her an official invitation to Begin work in their Ebola clinics both patient saw me you see I I love the fotos [Music] these skills have been the engine of innovation and survival since the beginning of civilization but we've arrived at
a time when your human skills are just as important as your knowledge so what can you offer who's ready when you had me in your hands slipping far away with the world at your [Music] command we close our [Music] eyes [Music] [Applause] [Music]
