The Abundance-Asia-Automation Test

Definition

Pink argues three forces are simultaneously eroding the value of routine, rule-based ("L-Directed") knowledge work: material Abundance, which satisfies functional needs and shifts demand toward beauty and meaning; Asia, where millions of comparably skilled knowledge workers do the same routine work for a fraction of Western wages; and Automation, where software and algorithms perform rule-based analytic tasks faster and more reliably than people. He distills this into a three-question test for whether any given piece of work — or any aptitude — has a future: "Can someone overseas do it cheaper? Can a computer do it faster? Is what I'm offering in demand in an age of abundance?"

In the Book

Chapter 2 builds each force with concrete cases: the Target shopping trip and the $17-billion self-storage industry as evidence of Abundance; the Mumbai programmers Srividya, Lalit, Kavita, and Kamal doing $70,000-a-year American software work for $15,000 a year as evidence of Asia (with Forrester's estimate of 3.3 million U.S. white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages moving offshore by 2015); and Garry Kasparov's 2003 draw against the chess computer Deep Junior — explicitly cast as "the John Henry of our new age" — as evidence of Automation, alongside software (Appligenics) that writes code and online tools that let patients pre-diagnose themselves. Chapter 3 then converts the three forces into the diagnostic test itself, applied to entire professions: medical schools adding narrative medicine and an "empathy index" because diagnosis can be automated but bedside judgment can't; law firms losing routine contract work to $14.95 online forms while keeping courtroom storytelling; GM's Bob Lutz declaring the company is "in the art business" because functional cars are no longer enough to compete on.

Why It Matters

The test gives a portable diagnostic for any capability, product, or job, not just Pink's own examples: if a task is routine enough to specify as rules, it is a candidate for automation or offshoring regardless of industry, and the durable value sits in whatever remains after you strip those out — synthesis, relationship, judgment, and taste. It reframes "will this be automated" from a vague anxiety into three concrete, answerable questions.