CQ COULD TOP IQ 

For decades we have heard about IQ, the Intelligence Quotient that supposedly measures intelligence. Now there is a new kid on the block, the CQ, or Change Quotient, measuring the ability to adapt to change in a changing world.

It is no secret that our institutions did not and still do not, advocate such an outlook. To do so, is contrary to definition: "Institution: an established law, custom, practice or system -- an organization having a social, educational or religious purpose." To advocate change in such institutions would have been, and still is, heresy (any opinion opposed to official or established views). Such thoughts are radical, also by definition -- "favoring fundamental or extreme change". Over the centuries the conservative outlook has generally served, a useful purpose. However, when radical change hits a culture, such change destroys the culture or society challenged. As the world globalizes -- itself a radical and totally new change -- old institutions have no knowledge of which direction to follow, what strategy to use or even where to appeal for guidance. The guides are lost, the guided disillusioned, angry, bitter and afraid. Where are the calm and confident in a storm of chaos? Certainly not among the leaders of the status quo, in the institutions or societies that advocated continually homage to the establishment. Outside their parish, they are but strangers in a strange land entering new forests (ironically, the word parish, in Greek, paroikos, means "stranger").

In previous columns I have spoken about the "knowledge navigators", often young computer "hackers" who seize the new technology of the day and ride it into the unknown. This has happened before. At the end, perhaps even signalling the end, of the Dark Ages were the bold, daring early sailors in the days of "Henry the Navigator" of Portugal. King Henry showed his navy how, by using the astralabe, the fore-runner to the sextant, up to then only used in monasteries for studying and measuring the angles of the sun and stars, enable ships to navigate uncharted seas.

Today's new knowledge navigators are worth listening to. Their's is a vision of hope, accomplishment, inner satisfaction and success. Not one of dispair, terror, indecision and poverty. They search for the unknown because they are bored with the known and they dream of the new adventures and riches that fall to the risk takers early in any new age.

What does this have to do with CQ, the Change Quotient? The new navigators, whether for genetic reasons or simply self-motivation, have high ratings on the yet undrawn CQ chart of tomorrow. They are going where no man has gone before. Sailing caravels of silicon and gallium arsenide, today's Magellans and da Gammas are actually seeing into the unknown, although they may be the first to admit they haven't yet confirmed in which direction they are travelling. Sound somewhat Columbian?

How do you identify such silicon sailors, since they wear no uniform a navy would recognize? By their inability to be taught. By their ability to learn. They are not the least bit interested in the known, that and the way it is presented is boring. They want to learn the unknown. You may also notice their confidence, assurance and optimism. And their tolerance of those who don't understand what they are seeking. Was it ever thus.

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