Читать книгу Next: A Vision of Our Lives in the Future - Marian Salzman - Страница 15

Whatever we claim to think of the impending millennium, most of us in the West are at least a little curious about what lies around the corner. We’ve grown up with futuristic novels and movies set in 2001 and beyond, and we can’t help but be somewhat anxious about how our lives will be altered by the period of rapid change we’re currently experiencing.

Now that we’ve laid out the Big Nexts that will help shape life next, we’d like to share with you our sense of what other key trends are lying in wait. The implications of these trends will not be quite so broad as those of the Big Nexts, but collectively they indicate the direction in which today’s trendsetters are moving our lives.

Next: A Din of Small – and Not So Small – Voices

Think of Drudge – as in Matt Drudge, author of the online ‘Drudge Report’ – as the symbol of a small voice roaring. He is America’s most famous Internet personality, a cyber-gossip who has now been signed by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV to transfer his yack from the on-line world to network television. Armed only with a computer and modem, he has managed to build himself into a media mogul online. While his online report hasn’t yet reaped major profits for him, it has provided a daily audience for his views and ‘news’ reports – one that is far larger than would have been accessible to anyone outside the major media prior to the birth of the Internet.

As with any form of mass media, the Internet wields great power. The difference between the Internet and TV or radio is that the Net allows two-way communication and gives as much potential power to a thirteen-year-old computer geek as to a corporate CEO or government leader. ‘Power’ online is based solely on the ability to draw in an audience and communicate with it in a persuasive manner. It can be utilized to bolster the rank of a political party, to form a fan club for a favourite celebrity, or to sell products and build one’s brand.

Voices outside traditional ‘news’ organizations are being heard in other media as well. A most interesting development in recent years in the US has been the video news release (VNR, which is routinely substituted for ‘hard news’ without warning to viewers that the footage was created by, for, and about a brand, a company or an organization – by anyone with the money to make and distribute videocassettes with edutainment value. Clearly, this is a consequence of the proliferation of twenty-four-hour news services and of the subsequent hunger for programming. (Imagine how much more programming is demanded by the Net.)

As brands make themselves heard at news stations worldwide, one needn’t take a very large step to consider the viability of branded news on TV. With iconography that has come to serve as a universal language (think Nike swoosh), numerous global brands are well on their way to creating the credibility they need to offer up believable ‘news’ and feature coverage.

Next: Arm’s-Length Communion

Caucuses, coalitions, militias, networks. By any name, such groups are all the rage. But 1998 is not a year for joiners. It’s a year in which followers sign on for brief respites of participation for the sole purpose of being recharged by the power of community: join a church for the monthly potluck supper; sign up for a half day of volunteering rather than commit to a long-term project; tuck a membership card from a political action committee into your wallet – no need to attend a second meeting. Informal networks are in; rigid institutions are out.

Next: Brands 2000

As a number of twentieth-century powerhouse brands battle to retain market share, new industries are springing up as if from nowhere to create power brands for the next millennium. Examples include Boston Market, creator of the home meal replacement industry; Starbucks, which turned coffee into a retail experience; and America On-line (AOL) which made the proverbial back fence a twenty-four-hour/seven-days-a-week opportunity for neighbourly chat and captured a share of coach potatoes’ minds and eyes from the networks. More trends to watch: convergence, as manufacturers and programmers of the boxes that run home and office create ever more indispensable products; edutainment, as we strive to make the next generation (and ourselves) more competitive; and relaxation as we pursue relief from the stresses of modern-day life.

Next: A Branded Existence

The world populace soon will have an all-too-clear understanding of the adage ‘everything communicates’, as marketers extend their reach beyond the usual platforms. Already in the testing phase: advertisements delivered via ATM and sampling offers based on smart-card purchasing patterns. Just as urban infill will eventually lay claim to every vacant lot in the urban landscape, so, too, will ‘brand infill’ ensure that every experience, thought, place and product is marketed to its utmost potential. As with marriage, some unions will be for life; others will be brief, even foolhardy. The unstoppable James Bond marketing machine – Tomorrow Never Dies drove high-speed visibility for BMW. Ericsson and Heineken, among others – is a ready reminder of the opportunities.

Next: In Praise of Parenthood

The death of eight-month-old American Matthew Eappen at the hands of his British au pair sparked heated debate about his mother’s choice to continue her professional career – albeit in a part-time capacity – rather than stay home to care for her children. The debate over ‘choice’ will no longer revolve solely around abortion; instead, more and more women will be faced with the need to defend their ‘choice’ to work outside the home – particularly when that home is in an upmarket community. Parenting will be touted as the most important profession of the next decade.

Next: Redefining Desirability

The new age of heightened desirability is thirty-six – the age at which Princess Diana will forever rest, frozen in time at the height of her sensuality. The fashion industry will continue to push parallel images of the heroin-chic sixteen-year-old model, mature beyond her years, and her counterpart: the youthful and innocent coquette. But the older, wiser, and much more sexy Diana archetype will prove a compelling alternative. Mature woman/young stud relationships will make headline news, supplanting the Jennifer phenomenon of the eighties, when twenty-something trophy wives were hunted and mounted by fifty-something tycoons. Look for Leonardo DiCaprio to partner with Sharon Stone, for the Francesca Annis – Ralph Fiennes romance to be duplicated again and again. Mid-youth now runs until the onset of menopause, with thirty-six marking the absolute age of power and those over forty-two still regarded as ‘hot’, bringing to relationships experience, enthusiasm, and – thanks to new fertility tricks – even the prospect of children.

Next: Greener Approaches

As this planet gets more crowded, consumers are recognizing their impact on the world, the world’s impact on them – and our communal responsibility to future generations. So far, the ‘pure consumer’ has embraced such green products as natural cosmetics, eco-friendly fabrics and organic food. Interest in sustainable architecture – with its emphasis on energy conservation, long-life materials, and environmentally friendly building techniques – is on the rise. And electric vehicles and their gas-and-electric-powered cousins, the hybrids, are poised to usher in an era of ‘green’ automobiles. Toyota, for one, expected to sell 12,000 models of its hybrid, the Prius, to Japanese consumers in 1998. As green thinking migrates from left to centre, consumers will increasingly demand environmental accountability from product and service providers.

Next: Aggressive Health Maintenance

Technology is coming that will ensure less invasive, more civilized and more humane ways to prevent, detect and treat disease. Ten years ago, magnetic resonance imagining (MRI) was an innovation which provided a radiation-free alternative to X-rays. The potential of this innovation will be extended far beyond testing for neurological disorders. MRI scanners will become far more accessible, and even primary-care practitioners will have direct access to such machines, enabling them to do everything from detecting breast abnormalities to determining the extent of knee and spinal injuries. At the same time, CT scans – which produce cross-sectional images by computing, using small doses of radiation – will facilitate virtual examinations of the lungs, bowels and other organs, without painful and dangerous invasion of the human body.

There is a yin and a yang to most trends, though, and this one is not without bad news. As disease screening becomes more prevalent, and more sophisticated, people deemed to be predisposed to particular diseases might be subjected to unnecessary medical procedures. Already we’re seeing healthy women submit voluntarily to radical mastectomies, simply out of the fear that a ‘high risk’ label creates in them.

As the health field grows ever more technical, and as patient choices continue to expand, expect to see a growing cadre of ‘medical advocates’ – professionals hired to guide individuals through the jungle of medical literature, ‘alternative’ medicines and medical options. In many ways, it will be these people who become the new ‘family doctor’ – despite the fact that they are not practising physicians.

Next: Them and Us – Left vs Right

In the short time before the new millennium, expect a major global clash between the left/liberals and the right/conservatives akin to the one associated with capitalism vs/communism and socialism. This new Cold War will be fought with particular intensity over family values issues. The superwoman of the 1980s has been killed by innuendo and a backlash against feminism and the gains of the women’s movement. Next on the right’s seek-and-destroy list are those who want abortion available on demand. The overarching goal: to return religion to the centre of public life.

Throughout the Western world, where family life has been a lesser priority than issues such as economic expansion, taxation and even education, expect social clashes to erupt, with women – particularly working women – bearing the brunt of the blows. Immigrants and minorities also will be the object of increasingly violent debate, as global fears pertaining to everything from job shortages to the loss of national identity and culture fuel the fears of those who face an uncertain future in an entirely new millennium. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, ultra-Orthodox Jews, and other factions on the religious right will gather force as the millennium approaches, many of them using the Internet as a tool for recruitment, proselytization and denouncing the sins of the world.

Next: Desperately Seeking People Like Me

As a byproduct of this schism between left and right, expect more and more investors and businesses to seek partners with compatible political and social (even religious) points of view. Whether it’s Shell Oil being scrutinized by potential investors or home contractors incorporating scripture into their advertisements, business relationships will be based on far more than the bottom line.

The same sentiment holds true for people who are simply looking for a network, a connection to others like them. In the coming years, geography will become far less important than shared attitudes, beliefs, experiences and values. The Internet ensures that whoever we are and whatever our passion, we have a very good chance of connecting with ‘virtual neighbours’ who will support and sustain us. This trend can be benign (at-home dads forming support networks) or it can be truly dangerous (already White Power activists, conspiracy theorists and holocaust revisionists are gaining strength on the Net). As people become more adept at harnessing the power of cyberspace, these unions will have the potential to change the world, for good or evil.

Next: Privacy is Dead

Of all the pre-millennial fears we face, loss of privacy is perhaps the most common. The truth is privacy is dead. It’s been taken away by the microchip, and it’s not coming back. One interesting side-effect of our lack of privacy is that it will spell freedom for many people. Instead of being ashamed of what we might consider our perversions or ‘unnatural’ impulses, we’ll see more and more just how many people think and behave the way we do. And once we realize that our indiscretions, big and small, are never secret for very long, we’ll be encouraged to allow our wild sides out of the closet a lot more often.

So, while the right will grow stronger and far, far more outspoken, we’ll also see an increased indifference to scandal (how scandalous can something be when ‘everyone’ is doing it?). From infidelity to bondage, from foot fetishes to businessmen wearing women’s undergarments, we’ll see an ‘assumed blindness’ develop to one another’s underbellies, along with a sense of futility regarding efforts to keep humans from being human.

Next: Am I Normal?

Getting inside the heads of ordinary people is an international craze. We now expect every guest who appears on a talk show to bare his or her dirty laundry – and very soul. And the fascinating thing is, just about all of them oblige us! There’s even a family in Sweden that has mounted a camera inside their refrigerator so visitors to their Website can monitor the family’s eating patterns.

Is this trend simply a movement toward exhibitionism? We think it’s much more than that. What we’re seeing is a deep-seated desire for confirmation. We want to know that what we’re doing, thinking and feeling is normal, and we’re looking to an audience of strangers to reassure us that no matter how bizarre our actions or attitudes, there’s someone else who’s far stranger. And as a result of our own loosened tongues, we’re angrily rejecting everyone else’s right to be discreet. (Just consider the backlash against Britain’s Royal Family when their mourning of Diana’s loss didn’t meet the public’s new standards of grief.)

A surge in typeradio – online chat with a moderator-announcer controlling the flow of the dialogue – and online support groups and discussion forums will be one of the more obvious offshoots of this trend. In the political forum, we’ll be willing to forgive every mistake, indiscretion or even crime – as long as we are privy to a detailed and heartfelt public confession or even an angry denial of wrongdoing. What we won’t forgive is the sin of silence.