Welcome Minnesota Futurists

Presented to Minnesota FuturistsBy David Keenan23 March 2013

Society Future Trends

Top Trends in Society & culture

1. Speeding up2. Anxiety3. Demographic change4. Global and local5. Happiness6. Authenticity7. Memory8. Networked9. Us and them10. Personalization

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

What’s Next

• Richard Watson • co-founder of Futures House Europe

(scenario planning) • author of the book Future Files • http://www.nowandnext.com

http://www.nowandnext.com/PDF/Trends%20&%20Technologies%20for%20the%20World%20in%202020.pdf

http://www.nowandnext.com/PDF/Trends%20&%20Technologies%20for%20the%20World%20in%202020.pdf

Speeding up• Everything is speeding up thanks to our

obsession with technology and efficiency - although whether anything is actually moving in the right direction is a moot point.

• You can blame computers, email, the Internet, globalization, mobile devices, low cost travel, whatever you like.

• The result is 24/7 access to goods and services, multi-tasking, meals in minutes, hectic households, microwave moms, meals on the run, insecurity, one minute wins and individuals (and organizations) that want everything tomorrow.

• The result is stress, anxiety, a lack of sleep, a blurring of boundaries between work and home, work-life imbalance and, conversely, an interest in slowing things down. 

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

Anxiety• Approximately 40 wars in 35 countries

Terrorism is rife and if 'they' don't get you a global pandemic probably will.

• Post 9/11 the feeling was fearful but this has now settled down to anxiety and, if all goes well this might level off to people being slightly rattled.

But the general feeling isn’t going away.

• Trust has all but evaporated (people don't trust institutions like government or the police any longer) and the speed of change, together with technology that disempowers, has left people yearning for the past.

• This insecurity is to some extent generational but whether you're eighteen or eighty there is a general feeling of powerlessness.

• This in turn is fuelling everything from an interest in nostalgia to the growth in narcissism, localization and tribalism. 

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

Demographic change• Demographics is the mother of all trends

“Demographics is destiny” Arthur Kemp• The big demographic shift is ageing. • In Europe 25% of the population is 65+. • Rise in single person households (46

million in Europe) caused by an increase of widows and widowers, but also caused by more people getting divorced and by people marrying later or not at all (42% of the US workforce is unmarried).

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

• Declining fertility rate (below the replacement rate in many developed nations) - a recipe for significant socio-economic change.

• Other linked trends include older parents, more one-parent families, male/female imbalance (eg China) and less traditional family units.

• In 1950 80% of US households were traditional 2 parent & kids nuclear family. Now the figure is 47%, while over in Europe there will be14% less nuclear families in 2006 than in 1995.

• The nature of demographic trends is that change is usually slow in any given direction.

Global and local• Globalization is obviously a

huge trend but if you look forward far enough it looks like the future will be local.

• You can already see evidence for this shift in the fact that the opposite, localization - is a major trend in everything from food to politics.

• Entirely possible that the EU could collapse back into local units or even small city-states and the consequences of this would be extraordinary.

• Theoretically, globalization still has many years to run (and will run alongside an interest in all things local) but we are increasingly at the mercy of resources.

• When natural resources such as oil run out, we will have no choice but to stop moving around and adopt a more local way of life.

• Back to where it all started. 

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

Happiness• Materialism is still in full swing but

it's starting to lose its appeal. • We are working harder and

working longer - but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that money can't buy you happiness.

• People are also starting to realize that identity is not shaped by what you own or consume but by who you are and how you live.

• To some extent the happiness phenomenon is really a search for meaning. Hence the increase in spiritualism.

• But it is also the case that people have too much time on their hands. • A century or two ago people were focused on survival and just didn't

have time for self-introspection. • Keep an eye on how often the topic of happiness appears in the general

media and when politicians and companies pick up on the issue you'll know the trend has truly arrived. 

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

Authenticity• Life is complicated and getting

more so. • We are suffering from

Too Much Information (TMI), Too Much Choice (TMC) and Too Much Technology (TMT).

• We are also being subjected to multiple truths (one minute coffee is going to kill you, the next it's a miracle cure) and fed a seemingly endless diet of half-truths and lies from companies and politicians.

• In response there is an interest in authenticity or 'realness'. People want to know where things (or people) are from and whether they can trust them. They also want to know what the story is.

• Of course there are contradictions. On the one hand we expect people and products to be trustworthy, ethical, real and tell stories about their history. On the other hand we are ourselves leading increasingly fake lives - filling our lips with Botox, dying our hair, enlarging our breasts and pretending we're happier than we really are. 

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

Memory• We increasingly live in a world that

forgets. • Companies have almost no sense of

their own history while politicians positively revel in the fact that voters cannot remember (or choose to forget) lies, deceptions and even criminal behavior.

• Power is essentially a battle between memory and forgetting.

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

• Memory loss is a by-product of trends like speeding-up and convergence. • Attention spans can almost be measured in nano-seconds• This in turn may give rise to memory loss in older age (cue various technical and

pharmaceutical solutions). • We are also becoming fixated with preserving our own memory. • ‘Life caching’ is a major trend (and a US $2.5 billion industry) where people effectively download (or

upload) everything from emails and text messages to photographs, video clips, and spoken words. • Similarly scrap booking is a hot trend at the moment, • Links: http://www.nokia.com/lifeblog  

Networked• When the US sneezes, the rest of the

world catches a cold. These days we all get to see and hear that cold in real time.

• Everything is increasingly linked together. • Expect this trend accelerate even more

to everything from RFID tags to smart dust. • This is both good news and bad. • It’s good because information (good and

bad) travels around the world instantly. This means everything becomes transparent.

• It’s bad because there will be little or no privacy and, since everything is connected, if something fails in one area the whole ‘network’ can be effected (‘cascading failure’ is the term).

• This explains how SARS can travel around the world at such speed and also how innovations are copied so quickly.

• We are assured that the Internet and devices such as mobile phones are immune from such networked failures due to their design. We disagree.

• Expect a catastrophic (but recoverable) failure within the next ten years. 

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

US and them• It would obviously be too simplistic to

carve up the world between America (and its allies) and the rest of the world, but some people see it that way.

• So far protest has been limited to street demonstrations and the launch of Muslim brands of Cola, but anti-American (and anti-Western) sentiment could go a lot further.

• Links with globalization, localization and ‘glocalization’. 

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

Personalization

http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1

• The i-Pod is an excellent example of all sorts of trends including place shifting, device convergence, Moore’s Law and miniaturization.

• However, the most interesting thing about the innovation is that it personifies personalization.

• Globalization creates commodification and homogenization, which in turn creates the counter trend of personalization as people react against standard issue products.

• Add a dose of technology and hey presto you’ve got a product that users can tailor to their own tastes and needs.

• Expect dozens of products in different markets to offer a similar degree of personalization in the coming years as customer desire meets technological possibilities.   

10 Demographic Trends Investors Should Be Thankful For

1. The air is cleaner. 2. The U.S. job market will continue to expand. 3. More Americans are completing high school and

going to college. 4. Divorce rates are down. 5. Poverty is falling.  6. Infant mortality is decreasing. 7. Violent crime has plummeted. 8. Americans are smoking less. 9. Americans are drinking less. 10. Fewer Americans are killed in war.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

The air is cleaner

• Total toxic air releases in 2012 were down 8% from the 2010 figure, a survey by the U.S. EPA found.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

U.S. job market will continue to expand

• Of the five largest global economies today, only the U.S will see significant growth in working-age population between now and 2050.

• However labor force participation rates will continue to decline by % until 2020 before slowly picking up again.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

Labor force participation rates, 1960-2010 and projected 2020

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

More Americans are completing high school and going to college

• Record numbers of young Americans are completing high school, going to college and finishing college, from less than one-fifth of young adults in the early 1970s to 33% in 2012

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

Divorce rates are down

• Many Americans are convinced that "half of all marriages end in divorce," though divorce rates have declined by almost a third from their early 80s high of around 50%.

• Men report themselves increasingly happy with their spouses; Women are less so.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

Source: nationalmarraigeproject.org

Percentage of married persons age 18 and older who said their marriages were "very happy,"

by period, U.S.A.

Poverty is falling

• Even though the world's population has doubled over the past 50 years, the percentage living in poverty has declined by 50% over that period.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

Infant mortality is decreasing

• Infant mortality and life expectancy have improved by more than 40% in Latin America since the early 1990s.

• No country in history has improved its average standard of living faster than China has over the past two decades.

Violent crime has plummeted

• The violent crime rate (crimes per thousand people) dropped from 51 to 15 between 1995 and 2010.

• Since 1991, the homicide rate has been reduced by half; violent crime and property crime are also way down.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

source: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports,  1950-2010

Americans are smoking less

• The rate of current cigarette use among U.S. teens decreased from nearly 12 percent in 2004 to about 8 percent in 2010, and dropped from nearly 40 percent to about 34 percent among young adults.

• Analysis from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Americans are drinking less • While overall sales are on the rise, Americans as a whole are drinking less. • In 1980, per person consumption was 28.5 gallons of alcohol. • By 2008, that volume was down to 25.7 gallons. This decrease reflects a

decline in beer and liquor consumption. • Wine drinking rose during this period.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

Fewer Americans are killed in war

• Today's wars tend to be sputtering, guerrilla conflicts that, on average, kill only about 10% percent than did violent, large-scale mechanized struggles of the 1950s.

• Indeed, the first decade of this century witnessed fewer casualties from war than any decade in the last century.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1292501-10-demographic-trends-investors-should-be-thankful-for?source=email_the_daily_dispatch&ifp=0

21Mar2013

The shrinking half-life of knowledge

http://www.internetbillboards.net/2013/03/futuristspeaker-com-a-study-of-future-trends-and-predictions-by-futurist-thomas-frey-blog-archive-the-half-life-of-a-college-education/

07Mar2013

• “One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge.

• The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete.

• Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago.

• The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD).

• To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”

Top 15 Radical Trends that will Shape 2013

1. The Innovation Nation2. Mobile Commerce Explodes3. The Social Media Enterprise4. The Predictive Organization5. Sustainable Cities6. Extreme Climate Change7. The Robots are Coming!8. Personalized Medicine9. Learning 2.010. Talent War11. Neuro-Enhancement12. Harnessing Big Data13. Personal 3D Printing14. Energy X15. Quantum Computing Breaks Out

http://www.intelligenthq.com/innovation-management/the-top-radical-trends-that-will-shape-2013/ 6Mar2013

Dr. James Canton CEO & Chairman of

the Institute for Global Futures

How I Did This

MNF 23Mar13 Society Future Trends Google serach on 16March: society future trends• http://www.nowandnext.com/?action=top_trend/list_trends&sectorId=1 (used)• http://pinterest.com/crogenroler/society-future-trends/ (not used – image blog)• http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/12/07/technologies-of-the-future-5-trends-

to-watch-for-2013/ (not used but good for tech futures)• http://www.tafterjournal.it/2013/03/01/future-trends-in-cultural-diplomacy/ (not used –

paper on corporate cultural diplomacy)• http://www.futurepundit.com/ (not used – blog)• http://www.intelligenthq.com/innovation-management/the-top-radical-trends-that-will-

shape-2013/ (used)• http://felipekorzenny.blogspot.com/ (not used - blog)• http://www.internetbillboards.net/2013/03/futuristspeaker-com-a-study-of-future-

trends-and-predictions-by-futurist-thomas-frey-blog-archive-the-half-life-of-a-college-education/ (used)

• http://www.globaltrends.com/reports/gt-2012 (not used - market study offer)• http://beforeitsnews.com/strange/2013/03/future-trends-the-consummation-of-the-kali-

yuga-2447718.html (not used - nutty)• http://www.trendwatching.com/seminars/singapore/ (not used – conference)