Too much choice – we can’t decide what we really need

The vast amount of information and choice now instantly available may also be narrowing our field of vision. A metastudy of scientific journals (a study of other studies) by James Evans at the University of Chicago found online journals are starting to cite fewer and fewer other academic papers and the papers that are referenced tend to be relatively new.

In other words, the breadth of information links is actually narrowing. This is odd because you’d think that online searching would make it easier to add more sources but perhaps this is a function of narrowing search. People simply don’t bump into information accidentally as much as they used to.

For example, only 1% of Google searches actually proceed beyond page one of results, so if something isn’t listed on page one, it might as well not exist. So does this mean that Google is closing minds rather than opening them? Late in 2009, for instance, Google launched an online news service called “Fast Flip”. This allows users to browse news stories significantly faster than if they loaded individual web pages. It is, according to Google: “really fast without unnatural delays”. Yes folks, you can now jump from one factoid to another without having to think about what you are doing.

Another example of how choice can create restriction is my own television viewing habits. When I only had 3-4 terrestrial channels to choose from I would be forced to watch certain programmes simply because there was nothing else on. And this indirectly expanded my experiences. I found things that I didn’t think I’d like and programmes I wasn’t expecting to watch. But nowadays I have a choice of 100+ digital channels from around the world and there never seems to be anything worth watching. Over-choice forces me to watch what I’m already familiar with and new experiences are forfeited.

Why did it take so long for someone to come up with the idea of putting wheels on the bottom of suitcases? It’s a great idea, right? Yes and no. If you are an elderly person, or a small child, I can see how lubricating the wheels of long-haul travel is a good idea. But there are some unforseen consequences.

Wheeled suitcases are emblematic of an age in which a dominant attitude is “I can do anything I want.”

In the days before wheeled luggage, people had to think carefully about what they packed. But nowadays we can wildly over-pack and get away with it. Technology has come to the rescue and we can now break free from the physical limits imposed by nature. Our suitcases can now be as super-sized as our over-stuffed homes and our over-weight bodies. Quite why people need so much ‘stuff’ is beyond me, but at least we’re all free to choose.

Another example of this “I can have anything I want” attitude is something that’s going on in parts of London. For example, I know of a house that’s been bought by a developer who has decided to build a double height extension on the back of the house. Fair enough. But that’s not enough.

The Victorian terraced house is, it seems, still too small, so he is using the latest underground innovation to excavate a double depth basement to squeeze in a few more rooms, possibly even a small subterranean swimming pool. Once upon a time, if you wanted a big house you bought a big house. Now, if you have the money, you can make a small house big by stuffing it full of rooms that shouldn’t be there.

I’m all for new ideas. But surely new ideas should focus on real human needs that significantly benefit the largest number of people on the planet- or else benefits the planet as a whole?

After eight and a half years based in Australia I am returning to England. It’s a tough call, but the commute between Sydney and London finally got to me, especially the occasion, a few months ago, when I did the journey twice in three weeks. Mind you, I did establish that once you’ve got jet lag it’s impossible to get double jet lag. You just get a general blur. Maybe that’s what my friend Ross means when he says jet lag is just your soul trying to catch up with your body.

What will I miss? I will miss getting back from work and throwing myself into a pool. I will miss decent coffee, year-round BBQs, fresh mangoes, insects with attitude, properly aged meat (Victor Churchill, Queen Street), the smell of eucalyptus after a rain storm, people that say “thank you” to bus drivers when they hop off and a handful of thoughtful and interesting people.

I will miss the sea, the openness and the optimism of the Australians too. Also, the “She’ll be right mate” attitude. The “Fair go” (everyone is entitled to have a go at anything, regardless of background or position). I will also miss the sun and the space. I think these last two are a fundamental cause of the enduring (“no worries”) optimism. The light is hard in Australia but there is softness to the people. Even when things get tough there is still (generally) the thought that you can walk down to the (clean) beach and smile at a stranger and there is every chance that they will smile straight back at you.

What am I looking forward to? Someone (we’ll call him Oliver because that’s his name) once said that the best two things about Australia are leaving it and coming back. I think it’s the same with England. I am looking forward to seeing more of a handful of interesting and thoughtful people, but the best thing about England is what Donald Rumsfeld once called ‘”old Europe.”

For an (alleged) futurist I am strangely attracted to the old and Europe does old in abundance. This gets me thinking. One of the reasons I have a love/hate relationship with the digital age is that digital things have no trace of discernable history. Digital content is always pristine. It is not degraded by time and all copies are exactly the same. Hence, ‘digital’ has no discernable character.

Let me give you an example. I have a few albums from the 1970s and 1980s that have be worn by the hands of time. There are marks on the covers that tell particular stories and scratches on the records themselves that give each and every one a unique character and narrative. My digital music collection, on the other hand, is largely invisible and is uniquely devoid of personality.

It’s the same with photographs. I have photos that are fifty years old that are slowly fading to nothing, much like many of their subjects. I also have a handful of Polaroid photos taken in the 1970s that are similarly fading, although it is the memory of the talking of each photograph that I remember the most. I can remember the sound – even the smell – of some of these photographs.

When film was expensive we took care about what we photographed. Similarly, the theatre of seeing a photograph develop slowly before one’s eyes (Polaroid film if you are much under thirty) is still imprinted in my memory. Even popping a film in the post and waiting a week or more for the photos to be developed (”some day my prints will come”) had a perverse appeal.

So what have we got nowadays? Well the taking of photos costs next to nothing so we don’t think very much about what we are taking photographs of. Equally, while we shoot almost anything, we print virtually nothing. And we don’t back up our ‘collections’ of photographs very much either, do we? I guess the deal here is that we have traded an intensity of seeing for convenience.

Maybe books will go the same way. We will download them from invisible libraries for 99 cents a shot (shades of Dickens Tuppeny Tales?). Once read they will sit on invisible shelves displaying no hint as to where they have been or by whom they were once read.

Again, the pay off will be that we may end saving lots of time but not having anything of value that is worth saving. We will end up living lives where everything we do, see or come into contact with will be captured digitally, but in the end these lives will be totally devoid of meaningful or memorable content.

Must go…got another plane to catch.

Here’s a thought. Why are there so many films about vampires, ghosts and mediums around at the moment? Could it be connected to the baby boomer bulge? That there are a large number of people approaching retirement, especially in the US, and these people are starting to think about their own mortality? Hence an interest in shows about the afterlife, or immortality. Here’s another thought. Graph major demographic trends in the US and then see if there’s a correlation to certain types of hit TV shows or movies.

I’m sitting by a swimming pool eating watermelon and a few things have drifted into my mind, as they always do when I am removed from the normal distractions of daily existence.

First, I think the idea that there is a shift going on away from consuming products to consuming experiences is Western-centric. I think it’s true that there is a shift towards experiences in regions like the US and Europe, but this is less true in other parts of world. For example, there is plenty of research showing that when people move from relative poverty to relative wealth they start buying products that are an outward display of prosperity. But as this wealth becomes normalized the spending becomes more inner-directed. Thus, a shift away from clothes and cars towards the inside of a home or towards education and travel.

So here’s a prediction. In developing markets (e.g. the BRICs) luxury goods will do well, whereas in developed markets luxury goods companies will have to warp their products around sensory experiences or even membership clubs. So, yes, consider buying shares in luxury goods companies, but only if they are well established in emerging markets.

Of course, there’s an immediate flaw in this argument. What about the Indians and the Chinese versus the English and Americans when it comes to education?

BTW, speaking of education, according to an interview with Andy McNab in the FT, recruits going into the infantry division in the UK army used to have a reading age of 12. Now it’s 7.

A second thought. There will be more bubbles in the future because global connectivity is acting as an accelerant for herd behaviour. Moreover, the scale and frequency of such bubbles will grow dramatically. I think gold is a current example of a bubble about to burst. Only a genius would dare to suggest when exactly this will happen but I will make a vague prediction of within the next 18-months.

I’ve got writers’ block. Actually it’s more writers’ diarrhoea – lots coming out but little, if anything, of real substance.

One thing. I did a talk this morning about ‘prediction’ and the other speaker mentioned that he thought the ‘generations’ were becoming extinct. He might have a point. Is there really any difference nowadays between Gen Y and Gen Z (millennial, iGen, new silent generation – whatever you want to call them)?

Back in the 1950s there was a big shift in the way that teens behaved versus their parents. Since about 2000 the generations have been converging.

I think this is an interesting argument, but I do believe that, for the time being at least, there are still major generational differences between Boomers and X’ers or between X’ers and Gen Y. Where there is less difference is between Y and Z, although even here I could argue that there is as much difference within Y and Z and there is between Y and Z or between X and Y.

See. I told you it had no substance.

How about a takeover of BP by Shell? The antitrust issues would be huge, but BP is vulnerable right now and the two companies fit together rather nicely geographically.

Odds?

I’m becoming slightly concerned. I’ve always thought that civilisation was a veneer. Look at Thailand and Greece. It doesn’t take much for rage to erupt. Could such rage be transferred to places like Britain? I think it could.

The problem is the convergence of a number of issues. First, the UK government is in debt. As a result they will have to put up taxes significantly. I’d expect VAT (sales) tax to increase to 20% and I wouldn’t be surprised if some forms of indirect taxation were to rise too. The top rate of 50% personal taxation is probably not going away either. But that’s just the start of it.

Unless growth in some parts of the world slows down significantly, energy costs (especially oil and gas prices) will go up dramatically. This means higher costs at the fuel pump, but it also means higher electricity prices, higher domestic heating costs and higher food prices. These might not sound important but they can and do cause riots.

But if that were not enough, I’d expect government investment in essential services and infrastructure to crumble. So worse roads, worse education and worse hospitals. Opportunistic crime will go up but investment in policing will go down. Add all this up and you have increasing frustration running alongside declining trust in politicians.

Those at the very top of society do not have a problem. They are generally mobile and will simply leave the country at a certain point. This is happening already. Equally, those at the bottom don’t really have anything further to lose.

But those in the middle, the bulk of the country essentially, will be unable to afford the same standard of living as their parents. The idea that the future is always better materially than the past will start to evaporate and these people, traditionally people that do not complain, will become increasingly angry. I’d expect all this to fuel nationalism, protectionism and disengagement with global issues and institutions.

Meanwhile, in Asia, there is the possibility of rising living standards, or at least the continued embrace of concepts such as free trade and globalisation. That’s an interesting combination. A declining ‘developed’ world running right alongside a rising ‘developing’ world.

My 2010+ trends & technology timeline is being translated into Polish for a magazine. The guy doing the translation has asked me what I mean by ‘Sense of Entitlement’? Apparently the phrase doesn’t translate very well into Polish.

What I mean, and I think this is important, is that people increasingly believe that they are at the centre of the universe. That they are entitled to have anything they want anyway they want it. This obviously has strong links with individualism and personalisation, but the question to my mind is whether or not this trend is on the wane?