“Meaning is Perception”

“Information is indeed conceptual. But meaninging is not; it is perception.”

The Essential Drucker, 2001, it’s a selection of hand-picked ‘best chapters’ by Peter Drucker from his 60 years of writing an immense amount of diverse topics: social commentary, academic works, business & management books.

Chapter 26 of this book, ‘From Analysis to Perception’ — Is from his 1988 book The New Realities. One must realize that as this was being written, and even as it was published in 1988, there was no internet yet, there was no social media yet, there were no smartphones yet. Drucker may have seen some of that stuff coming, but a lot of his writing is based on the massive macro and micro view of trends he foresaw. And not just in the US but around the world. His research methods were spectacular. His use of analogy was even more so.

This chapter really looks at macro trends from the beginning of the steam engines in 1712, to atomic fission in 1945. He also discusses going from animal power in the early 1500s to the first machines in the Industrial Age. Then he caps it all off with us entering into the information age.