A final tasty morsel from Tomorrow’s People by Susan Greenfield.
‘A sense of insecurity will probably be the underlying tone of everyday life in the future.”
Quote of the Week
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Monthly Archives: February 2009
Food Trends
I’m delving into food trends again so here are some thoughts on the most important food related trends for 2009.
1. Convenience
2. Health & wellbeing
3. Comfort eating (including indulgence and treats)
4. Cooking at home and home baking (to save money)
5. Regional & seasonal foods (including micro-regional)
6. Polarization between low cost and premium (but shifting to value)
7. Simplicity
8. Organics and Chemical free foods (but on the decline currently)
9. Food labeling (what’s exactly is in it? Where’s it from etc)
10. Small plate dining and big bowls
Some other trends bubbling under the surface include; small plate dining, fair trade foods, probiotics, cheaper cuts of meat, cup cakes, sponge cakes, heritage vegetables, miniaturization, growing your own food, raw food, bistro cuisine, tap water, postal delivery of food, modern and fusion updates of India, Mexican and African food, steaming and braising, sherry, cider, vinegar, fancy salt, nuts, fixed-price dining, noodles, smoked meats, gastro-pubs, ginger, house made charcuterie, rustic food, cinnamon, turmeric, tarragon and alternative sweeteners (e.g. Stevia and Agave nectar).
Scenarios for 2009+
If you recall, there was an earlier post about a scenario matrix for 2009+ that I created with Oliver Freeman and Wayde Bull. The scenario matrix was originally created to look at the future of brands but it seems to have a resonance way beyond this area.
A good example is a slide that I saw recently from a Belgian research company that was investigating the implications of the current financial meltdown. The slide (used here with permission) appears above and has striking similarities with the previous matrix, which appears again below.
See what you think.
Flags
Here’s an interesting snippet from Tomorrow’s People by Susan Greenfield.
One of Greenfield’s main arguments is that technology is not facilitating a loss of individual identity. Indeed, we are experiencing quite the opposite. We are seeing the emergence of a kind of collective super ego that is not private but public. There is too much identity and it has become collective.
One of post-war Germany’s most influential writers was a fellow called Sebastian Haffner and one of his major aims was to explain Germany (especially the rise of Hitler) to the British. According to Haffner, the reason that Hitler emerged in Germany in the 1930s was a lack of identity. Essentially Hitler gave Germany its collective identity back. He also made the point that between 1918-1939 Germany became obsessed with sport (another form of collective identity).
I’m sure you know where I’m going with this. Have you noticed how, for instance, people are starting to wrap themselves up in flags? When I was growing up in England the only people that painted their faces with the English flag were football hooligans. These days everyone is doing it. Over on the other side of the world, Australia Day has become a naked celebration of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ and people do quite literally wrap themselves up in flags. Personally I find this rather unsettling. The mass public hysteria surrounding the death of Princess Diana seemed to tap into something similar.
Greenfield’s book was written in 2003 but since the financial collapse of late 2008, nationalist and tribalist forces seem to moving centre stage. I’m sure it’s not 1939 returning but it’s something to keep an eye on.
PS – Image from Ross Dawson.
Anti-Nostalgia
Interesting article by Jan Dalley in the FT last weekend (I get rather behind with my reading sometimes). Are we riding a wave of anti-nostalgia at the moment? I think Dalley might be onto something with this trend. The idea here is the ‘old world’ versus the ‘new’ and how the new often falls flat on its face and disappoints. She is talking largely about art but the idea stands up on a broader level I think.
One could perhaps frame this conflict as technology versus humanity. Where’s the evidence? Personally I’d point to the current popularity of old predictions circulating on the internet and books such as Where’s My Jet Pack by Daniel H Wilson. Interestingly there is possibly a connection here with two of the scenarios worlds that I commented on a few weeks ago, namely ‘Enoughism’ versus ‘Smart Planet’. Keep your eyes open for other examples of techno-backlash.
Tomorrow’s People
I keep meaning to finish off the last few pages of The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb but I keep getting sidetracked. This time it’s because of another book called Tomorrow’s People by Susan Greenfield. I’m doing a presentation on Friday on the Future of Policing to a law enforcement agency and I’m reading up on future technology. If you haven’t read it this is a superb book on how technology is changing the way that people think and act. In fact it could be the best book I’ve ever read on the subject.
Some of the other stuff I’ve found within scenario documents produced by the CIA, National Intelligence Council and the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre (part of the MOD) is quite breathtaking. I was aware of some of this but the sophistication of some of the surveillance and predictive technologies (especially reality mining) is quite extraordinary. BTW, I’m not saying that this is good or bad, just that it exists and will become more pervasive in the near future.
Economic Protectionism
One of the trends that I talked about in my book, Future Files, was that globalisation was creating a strong counter-trend of localisation and that eventually we would see a rise in nationalism and economic protectionism. Well sure enough it’s happening.
India has just banned all imports of Chinese built toys for six months. India gets about 50% of its toys from China and exports are worth around GBP £350 million per year to the Chinese economy. Meanwhile, in the UK there are calls for “British Jobs for British Workers”. It’s much the same story in North America and elsewhere.
So far all fairly obvious. But what are some of the other consequences of a global slowdown?
In my view economics deeply influences politics so we can expect the economic situation to deeply define politics for at least the next 2-3 years. The bad news is that we will probably see a swing towards extremism and there could easily be a significant swing to the far-right.
The model here is the politics of the 1930s, where economic woes fanned the flames of far-right extremism in Europe but also of racist movements such as the KKK in the US. Don’t think that this could be a slow shift either. If recent events tell us anything it’s surely that we live in a globally connected world where ideas and actions can travel at extraordinary speed. I hope this isn’t 1939 returning.
Scenarios for the Future of Brands
I was talking with Fjord (a digital services design firm in London) recently and they had an interesting idea for the Y-Axis of the Scenario matrix that I developed with Wayde Bull and Oliver Freeman. What if social activism and social passivism were simply replaced with ‘we’ (at the top) and ‘me” (at the bottom). Nice!
Thinking About Thinking
I’m still thinking about where people think and how different tools influence the type of thinking you get. BTW, here’s a shot of my desk from this morning. My latest experiment is writing to people (by hand!!!) asking the question: “where and when do you do your best thinking?”
It will be interesting to see whether the form of the communication (email, handwritten letter, blog post etc) influences the answers in any way.
I have been talking about the rise of analogue technology (fountain pens, wet film photography, vinyl records etc) as a counter-trend to digital technology for some time and I even acquired a fountain pen and some personal stationary recently.
Of course this all seemed like a really good idea until I started to physically write anything. My hand almost fell off after the first five letters. It seems my body has physically adapted to typing on a keyboard rather than scribbling with a pen.
If anyone would like to post a comment to the question above please do so…or you could always send me a handwritten note of course!
Predictions for 2009 (or Maybe 2008?)
Here’s something from the New York Times, dated 4 February 2009:
U.S. Plans $500,000 Cap on Executive Pay in Bailouts.
“The new rules would be far tougher than any restrictions imposed during the Bush administration, and they could force executives to accept deep reductions in their current pay. They come amid rising public fury about huge pay packages for executives at financial companies being propped up by federal tax dollars…
…President Obama last week branded Wall Street bankers “shameful” for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was deteriorating and the government was spending billions to bail out some of the nation’s most prominent financial institutions.”
And here’s something that I wrote in December 2006 (See the Australian Edition of Future Files, published September 2007, page 129).
“Big banks, in particular, will come under increasing scrutiny about their lending practices, and there will be calls for salary and profit caps in some extreme instances.”
Not bad eh? I think the point here is that predictions can come true if only you give them enough time. I also think that personally speaking I get ahead of myself by about 12-18 months. Implications? Ignore most of my predictions for 2009 and focus on what I said would happen in 2008 instead! 🙂
Here’s the list from 2008…
1. Karma Capitalism
2. Rhythm & Balance
3. Making things
4. Something for nothing
5. Industrial provenance
6. Robotics
7. Data visualisation
8. Reality mining
9. Eco-exhaustion
10. Fantasy & escape
Watch the first one and the last one in particular for 2009.