Goodness me. First the good news. The book is selling really well and was the #2 best seller in the bookshop that I dropped into yesterday. It also seems to be everywhere. Not bad given that it’s only been out just over a week. The publisher has also managed to sell the rights to China and the reviews are pretty good too.

And the bad news? First of all the fact that the book is about the future seems to have brought out some rather ‘interesting’ people out of the woodwork. My email in box is certainly more colourful than it was a few weeks ago. So apparently the answer to life, the universe and everything is in the Star Trek movies if you watch closely enough. Ummm. The other issue is that the book seems to be quite controversial, especially amongst people that clearly haven’t read it. The result is mis-quotes, quotes out of context and, most bizarrely of all, people quoting me about things I’ve never actually said. For example, apparently I’ve said that a “Theory of Everything, uniting quantum theory and relativity, would in some way ‘debunk’ Einstein’s work”. Really? I don’t recall saying anything of the sort. I think what I actually wrote (Robert) was:

“One of the most fascinating questions about the future is whether religion will be a victim or a beneficiary of change. Some people predict that faith will decline because the spread of information will undermine the mindset necessary to support belief. Physics will produce a unified theory of everything and this will destroy old-fashioned superstitions like religion. In other words science will become our new religion. I’m not so sure. If science, technology and complexity become key ingredients of the future this will drive change and uncertainty. And the more this happens the more people will seek out safety, comfort and guidance from religion. This could just lead to an increase in individual spirituality, but I suspect that globalisation, mixed with a general feeling of powerlessness and anxiety, will drive group actions and beliefs. Hence we will witness an increase in tribalism, nationalism and xenophobia.”

Anyway, glad I cleared that up. If you’d like to read this passage in context it appears in Chapter One, which can be downloaded for free at www.futuretrendsbook.com. Back soon with some of the reviews and then it’s back to the normal top trends.

OK, my new book hits the shops on Monday (3 September) so I thought I’d share with you the fact that the book website is now live. If you go to www.futuretrendsbook.com and click on the ‘download’ button you can read the whole of chapter one.

If you click on ‘sources’ and go down towards the bottom of the page there are also some quite good web links, timelines and maps relating to the future as well as a very comprehensive book list. Enjoy!

Sorry, it’s been getting a bit busy with the book launch coming up. Here’s another sneaky peek.

The average US movie now costs close to US $100 million to make and the window of opportunity for marketing and distribution is concentrated on two or three critical holiday periods each year. I was talking to a Vice President of a major film studio last year and he said that even the old idea of an opening weekend as an indication of how successful a film is going to be has now shifted to ten minutes. If an audience doesn’t like the opening they are immediately on their phones sending text messages to their friends saying, “don’t bother”. Add to this the increasingly unrealistic wage demands of movie stars and it’s clear that Hollywood is looking more like a disaster movie every year. However, while things are going to get worse for a while there is ultimately a light at the end of the (digital) movie projector.

Typical. You wait ages for your book to come out and then a few weeks beforehand someone in the same country brings out a seemingly identical book with a similar title. So my bedtime reading is now Future Perfect: What Next? And other impossible questions by Robyn Williams. I’ll let you all know how I get on with it.

Meanwhile…some more of my book!!!

In the UK there were 6.5 million workdays lost to stress back in 1995. By 2001 that figure had jumped to 13.4 million and there is no reason to suppose that this trend won’t accelerate into the future. However, taking a very long term view average hours worked have actually been declining for a century. So again, what’s causing the stress? One possible explanation is the increased pace of modern life caused by technology but this doesn’t really stack up either. In the 1870s the term ‘neurasthesia’ was created to describe the nerve-racking effects of modern inventions like the railway and the telegraph. What has changed though is the willingness of people to say that they are suffering from stress — a badge of honour in many work environments. There is also the argument that as societies become richer there is more time for introspection and people begin to feel a sense of entitlement, which fuels anxiety when expectations are not met. Whatever the reason the problem is going to get worse in the future. In the US 40% of workers say they have experienced verbal abuse at work and murder recently emerged as one of the most common causes of death at work.

My book isn’t out until 3 Sept but I got my first review today. Not bad at all.Here’s another small extract – this time one of the many ‘Postcards from the Future’.

14 November 2030
Dear Ollie,
This will knock you out. I’m sending you something I’ve just found called ‘Leaves.â„¢ It’s a new product from Past Toyz in Shanghai featuring a giant biodegradable plastic bag containing real farm grown leaves that have been hygienically dried and treated with an anti-bacterial agent for ‘safe outdoor fun’ â„¢ Can you believe it? Why didn’t we think of that?  I think the idea is that you empty the bag in your backyard and play with the leaves. Either that or you can drive that hygiene and order fixated neighbor or yours crazy by placing a single leaf on his plastic lawn every night for the next two years.  I suppose the company did some research with Maverns and Connectors that said that people in urban areas aren’t getting as close to nature as they like.  Back in my day leaves grew on trees but the colours weren’t manipulated and the bugs were kept in check by other bugs not chemicals.  Anyway, it certainly made me laugh.  You can always send it back if the joke is lost on you.
All the best,
Leon.
PS- What’s Next? — aerosol dirt?

Does this mean that the Internet fridge will finally take off? Probably not because there is no real customer need and the computer usually gets old and out-of-date before the fridge, but some way of alerting people to what food you’ve got in your house, what you can make with it and ordering what you need but don’t have could be a winner.In Japan the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation sells a kitchen appliance with the snappy name of the Umasa Vitamin Zoryo Hikari Power Yasai Shitsu fridge. It’s the first fridge in the world that increases the vitamin C content of the food contained within through a process of photosynthesis. It’s a good example of how technology will be used to increase the healthiness of what we eat.

The date is the 14 April 2047. It’s 2am at a garage in downtown Los Angeles and I’m with a small group of eight men ranging in age from seventeen to seventy-five and we are all looking in awe at a 1949 Mercury Sedan. The vehicle is a museum piece but that’s not why everyone is here. The owner (we’ll call him Steve) is planning to do an illegal run up the highway running the car on petrol. These days petrol is pretty rare but you can still buy it from various illegal sources. The petrol for tonight’s run has come from a guy in outside San Francisco that has discovered how to extract gasoline from vintage plastic shopping bags dug up from a Mexican landfill. It’s pretty rough stuff but it will do the job, not least because the car’s engine is unrestricted (now illegal). If we’re caught using petrol we could face six-months on a prison island. Steve starts the car up with a key. The engine sounds unlike anything most of the assembled crowd have ever heard. You can buy software to make otherwise silent electric cars sound like old petrol engined sports cars from the last century but it immediately appears that these are pale imitations of the real thing. The exterior of the car is made of metal and is painted. Inside it smells of oil and leather.