>Artists have always feared that they are unappreciated and that the march of progress comes only from business, science and their machines. 1984 was imagined by an artist projecting these exact fears.

1984 is about authoritarianism and censorship. The "futurology" section of its wikipedia article is about predicting a future in which the dystopian state depicted in the novel is stable, and persists indefinitely. (That is, the one discussing futurology as a theme of Orwell's work. It has nothing to do with machines taking over art or whatever nonsense the author has projected onto Orwell's work.)

That 'artists' shy away from systems thinking is a ridiculous assertion. The first person who comes to mind is Leonardo Da Vinci:

From the wikipedia article bearing his name,

"Renaissance humanism recognized no mutually exclusive polarities between the sciences and the arts, and Leonardo's studies in science and engineering are as impressive and innovative as his artistic work.[17] These studies were recorded in 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and natural philosophy (the forerunner of modern science), made and maintained daily throughout Leonardo's life and travels, as he made continual observations of the world around him.[17]" [0]

I would argue that systems thinking and understanding the world around us is essential to produce art that isn't descended from something like a cargo cult.

>Over the next 100 years, the importance of creativity will trump systems thinking due to the rapidly escalating power of computers.

First of all, systems thinking is more than just computer programming. In the same way that cybernetics is more than just computer programming. Writing programs that do what you want and do what you mean without actually specifying the operations involved is something that I would think is an AI complete problem.

In other words, to explain the problem you must first understand the problem, hence systems thinking.

>No, I’m not talking about an apocalyptic “Rise of the Machines,” but rather about the future ascent of people who excel in creativity, intuition, and the marshaling of original solutions, things that computers won’t be able to do for a long time.

I'd bet money computer algorithms that can write code can draw you a picture. (That is to say, 'creativity' is also an AI complete problem.)

>In the United States, the key predictive score to spot a good systems thinker-- our future leaders-- has been the SAT and IQ tests.

I think the biggest name on wikipedias "list of mensans" is Buckminster Fuller. With a membership of 110K, I would expect a larger list if IQ was an almost 1:1 predictor of success.[1]

The rest is just design dressing.

[0]: Taken from the article, Fri Mar 1 23:26:15 PST 2013
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_vinci)

[1]: One could argue that wikipedia may not have an exhaustive list of MENSA members who went on to do great deeds. My reasoning is that because wikipedia is a community project, the people who would compile a list like that are probably MENSA members who want to brag. Therefore the list is probably fairly inclusive of most famous MENSA members. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mensans)

[2]: I'm citing wikipedia yes, but the OP cites nothing.