Trend # 4. Unsupervised adults

First it was unsupervised children. The thought that it was unsafe for children to play alone outside. But it appears that battery-farmed children are merely the beginning. Collectively, we are now so afraid of the unknown that adults (primarily men) are now seen as predatory until proven innocent – i.e. adults cannot be trusted and need supervision.For example, last summer I took my two boys, aged 8 and 6, to an outdoor swimming pool outside London. They got changed and we all walked over to the pool. They jumped in and I walked* over to a row of chairs a few feet away from them. In what seemed like a nanosecond a lifeguard appeared and informed me that I would have to move for “child protection reasons.” Apparently, being a man, I might be a risk. This was slightly odd. The only children in the swimming pool were my own kids. Presumably this was because, being an English summer, most parents had done a personal risk assessment and concluded that the water temperature in the outdoor pool might be a health and safety risk.This precautionary principle is now being applied to schools. Anyone wanting to physically enter a school (a parent with kids at school for instance) will have to undergo police checks to ensure that they are not a threat. What’s next — compulsory video monitoring inside every home in the country? Why not? If you weren’t doing anything wrong how could you object?** George Orwell is turning in his grave. I can see him with my live, government approved, security webcam.

* Running is obviously not allowed due to risk of injury and potential litigation
** I can think of several fairly serious objections to this idea

#5. Conspicuous non-consumption (developed markets only)

This is a flip side to expecting less. Expecting less is inner directed, much in the same way that true philanthropy is anonymous. You do both because you believe that what you are doing is right. What anyone else thinks (or sees) is irrelevant. But there is another side to expecting less, where using or consuming less meets an old set of selfish attitudes and behaviours.

The idea here is that some people not only want to be green or good but want others to see them doing it. It is externally directed. In some ways this is no bad thing. The more people that see a Toyota Prius (Pious?) the more other people might accept the idea of buying one for themselves. Ditto smaller cars in the US, water conservation, recycling and so on.

But there is another, more selfish side to this too. This is the flaunting-it side of social, ethical and environmental behaviour, where people are not simply content with doing their bit but want to be seen as either a trend-setter or someone that’s better than everyone else.

Again, nothing so dreadfully wrong with this in one sense except that at the extreme these people don’t actually give a damn about being good or responsible. It is ethical behaviour as a fashion statement and fashions, as we all know, change.

Predictions: Companies charging customers more to get less.

#6. Expecting less (developed markets only)

I have a bad feeling about this one. In theory ‘Enoughism’ is in full swing. We have seamlessly shifted from greed to good — from me to we — and we are now at the start of a new era in which social, environmental and ethical considerations are central to any discussion, issue or idea. There are clearly still people that believe in free market dogmas but they are looking increasingly silly. Or perhaps not.

Part of this shift from the primacy of the individual to that of the group means that the needs of others have to be taken into account. Thus, the idea that all of the world’s people should be able to share a slice of the pie. This inevitably means that some people will get more and some will get less than they have been used to. In developed economies this means buying less, consuming less and perhaps fixing or mending things rather than replacing them. It also means doing without certain things.

Books such as Enough by John Naish and How to be Free by Tom Hodgkinson tap into this ethos and there are undoubtedly a large number of people out there for whom ‘less’ is the new aspiration. But will it last? Is greed really dead or is it just resting for a while? Personally, I think it’s largely a fad.  Either it won’t last or it will only affect a small number of people. Moreover, whilst ‘Enoughist’ values become popular in developed nations, such beliefs appear rather ridiculous in other regions. Across much of Africa and Asia people many people barely have enough and in fast growing urban areas such as Dubai, Shanghai or Mumbai people can’t, it seems, get enough. Part of this is clearly a re-balancing of global consumption. But from a values point of view it is almost as though we are witnessing the desire to trade places.

Links with: Environmentalism, resource shortages, rising costs, make do and mend, frugality, no-frills, utility, declining real wages.

Conflicts with: Greed, instant gratification, culture of immediacy, individualism, sense of entitlement.

Trend #7. Digital isolation

One of the more ironic consequences of digitalisation is that the more connected we become the more isolated we feel. In short, real-world communities are breaking apart in favour of sealed off individuals. Part of the reason for this is that most of our newfound connectivity is wafer thin and it is isolation that is the recurring theme of life in the 21st Century. We have been persuaded to trade intimacy for familiarity and we are now paying the price.

For example, we know lots of people but we know them less well. We follow people on Twitter and feel that we know people but we are deluding ourselves. How can any friendship be properly maintained in 140 characters or less? It can’t. The reason that Twitter has been successful is that it gives the illusion of connection. We feel empowered because we can tell the world what we are doing (right now) but it plays straight into exhibitionist, narcissistic and voyeuristic urges.

Facebook friends are another example. Did you know that the average Facebook user has 130 friends? Great. But did you also know that research by sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke University North Carolina (US) has found that Americans have fewer real friends? What’s a real friend? Back in 1985 the average American had three people to talk to about their problems. Now the figure is just two.

Other research suggests that the proportion of Americans who say that they have nobody whatsoever to confide in has increased from 10% to 25% over the last twelve years. This broadly supports some very recent (December 2009) research by the Samaritan’s in the UK that showed that young people are more worried about loneliness than the elderly (21% for those aged 18-24 years of age versus 8% for the 55+ age group).

Implications? Expect to see an increase in feelings of aloneness and depression. Also expect people over a certain age to drift away from social networks and digital friendships in favour of their physical equivalents. Finally, expect to see an increased amount of interest in physical gatherings, live events and the thought that life is about quality not quantity.

Links: People buying digital friends online (e.g. uSocial.net)

Trend #8. Constant Partial Stupidity

People are now constantly distracted and find it difficult to stay focused on any one thing for more than a matter of minutes. This state of affairs is known as Constant Partial Attention (CPA), a term coined by an ex- Microsoft researcher by the name of Linda Stone.  But CPA is starting to spawn something else, which I think should be called Constant Partial Stupidity (CPS).

The idea here is that we are so busy monitoring the digital environment with digital devices that our attention is becoming fragmented. Furthermore, the explosion of digital information means that our memories are under attack because there is now just too much to remember. The result is a lack of quality thinking and an increase in avoidable mistakes.

For example, have you ever missed an appointment because you read an email too fast and didn’t see the footnote about the last minute change of venue? You probably used a mobile phone to find out where everyone was but you could have been in trouble if the battery was dead (you still haven’t backed-up your address list or printed out those photographs have you?).

Or how about your inability to remember multiple passwords, with the result that getting money out of an ATM at weekends has been turned into something resembling the national lottery? Or what about phone numbers? What is your home telephone number? Many people no longer have a clue and it’s not simply because they use a mobile telephone. This is the brave new world of too much information and not enough functioning memory.

Human attention is finite so inventing new distractions like twitter is all very well but there are consequences, such as our inability not to notice or remember simple bits of information. Doing things too fast (and having too much to do) can result in other silly things, such as sending out rushed emails (compose in haste, repent at leisure) or hitting ‘reply all’ when you really don’t want to.

In London a local council has experimented with cushioning on lampposts because pedestrians are walking into lampposts while they are texting. There are serious examples of semi-stupidity too. How about the truck driver that was looking at Google maps whilst driving on the M6 motorway — he ended up killing six people.

Links: Multi-tasking, single tasking, the attention economy, distraction, information explosion, memory, risk. Also links with the opposite trend  – i.e. never forgetting, digital immortality, spot knowledge and so on.

Trend #9 – Hunger for shared experiences.

How’s this for timing. Yesterday I wrote about fear fatigue. I thought this was really a UK trend but today there’s an article in the Sydney Morning Herald with a headline “How We Lost the Fear of Terror” by Daniel Flitton.

OK, enough of that. Trend number 9…

We are spending more time alone, either because we live/work alone or because everyday life increasingly involves a degree of automation, digitalisation and virtualisation, all of which can reduce physical human contact.

For example, there is now less need to interact with ticketing staff at airports. Once you are on onboard there is also little chance of a real conversation because you are confronted with a seat-back with a screen the moment you sit down, or because the person next to you is on the phone*

Similarly, some companies are experimenting with customer service avatars, so in the future you won’t even be able to have a real conversation with a nice man from Mumbai.  And even if you do come into contact with other people many of them do not wish to connect with you. This might be because they are in a hurry to get somewhere else or because there is a digital device, such as a mobile phone or iPod, in between you and them.

Examples of shared experiences? Live music is a very good example. We are downloading music files, movies and now books but all these can be strangely sterile experiences.Perhaps this is why live music festivals, cinema going, theatre going, book clubs and writer’s festivals are all booming.

Predictions: Expect a shift whereby people celebrate participation and the communality of experience above and beyond idiosyncratic expression. Also expect a continued boom in father/son camping trips and communal tables in fast-food joints and top-end restaurants.We might also see shops attempting (probably unsuccessfully) to ban mobile phone use in stores, especially at service counters and in check-out isles. BTW, this is a counter-trend to digitalisation, which is a much stronger trend. Do not expect this to replace digitalisation or virtualisation. It will simply sit alongside both.
Links: Presence (the opposite of telepresence)

* Use of mobile phones is now allowed on British Airways flights between London City Airport and JFK and on some Malaysia Airlines and Emirates Airlines flights

Photo credit: Jonathan Sands (I think?)

Here is the first of 10 trends for 2010+ Please note that this list of 10 does not replace previous lists. More often than not these are additions rather than replacements. BTW, this first one (and we’re counting down from 10-1) is primarily a UK trend. It’s also not mine. This is Max Kaehn’s idea but my words (thanks Max).

#10 Fear Fatigue

Fed up with being anxious or afraid? You are probably not alone. A spate of recent apocalyptic warnings about everything from total financial meltdown (another Great Depression and the end of Capitalism as we know it), swine flu (millions likely to die), the disappearance of bees (global food shortages), rogue asteroids (total planetary destruction) and deep vein thrombosis on long-haul flights (buy special socks and walk around a lot or you might die) have made some people a little bit jumpy.

On the other hand, there is only so much bad news that people can take. At some point people figure that things are so bad that they can’t possibly get any worse, or else because so many of the  so-called ‘apocalyptic’ warnings and predictions have not come true then you really can’t believe anything anyone says these days — especially nothing uttered by politicians, journalists and scientists. It’s almost a blitz mentality. Things are so gloomy that you might as well just keep calm and carry on in the hope that it’s them and not you.

However, this optimistic silver lining has a nasty dark cloud inside. If the experts are proved wrong time and time again, either due to bad information or because they err of the extreme side of caution, then people will, in all probability, ignore a very real warning when one finally comes along. Best not to worry about that possibility I guess.

Links: Global connectivity, information pandemics, culture of litigation, risk management, Precautionary Principle, flight to the physical, shift to safe savings (bonds, gilts, cash).
Opportunities: People want security, safety and control. They also want things that are simple and easy to understand.