New Power / Brain Power / Flower Power

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World–and How to Make It Work for You.  It’s a book by Jeremy Heimans, whom I know a little, and co-author Henry Timms, who runs the 92nd Street Y where I made a paper mâché duck when I was 10 while the cool kid in my class was playing basketball. A situation so embarrassing it left scars — but I digress.

David Brooks calls it “the best window I’ve seen into this new world.”  Check it out.

And if you missed “60 Minutes” Sunday (really? why would you do that?), check out MIT’s Media lab and — among much else — the guy who can search Google with his mind . . . a precursor to our all being able to interface with the web just by thinking.  You won’t have to say “Alexa,” you’ll just think your request.

As a species, we are on the cusp of becoming not just erectus (kangaroos  can do that too), and not just sapiens (a bigger deal: show me a kangaroo with an imagination), but deus — as detailed in the aforeplugged Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari.

But there are so many ways this could go wrong (speaking of gods, and humans not getting along, I love this Charles Barsotti cartoon) — even if all the world’s leaders were truly thoughtful, brilliant, and well motivated, like Obama, the Pope, Angela Merkel, Tim Cook, Malala Yusafzai, Mitt Romney, Al Gore.

Instead, some of the world’s leaders are murderers and liars — or friendly with murderers and liars — whose motivation seems to be their own wealth and power more than a vision to guide mankind successfully into the future.

Which is why, after a long day of doing all you can to register folks and turn them out to vote (fund that effort here), it makes sense to kick back with a beer:

It’s not available all that widely, and better on tap then in bottles, but it’s almost summer, and time for Flower Power!

(No, I don’t own a piece of the company.)