Last week I spoke at a conference in Madrid called “No Money”. It was hosted by Spain’s leading newspaper El Pais and was literally about the transition to a cashless society. Foregoing cash in the near future is no far-fetched idea since entire countries are...
One of the obligatory yearly conferences a professional futurist should attend is the one set up by World Future Society. I feel particularly obliged to attend since I am representing the Central Texas Chapter of the WFS in Austin as vice president. But alas, I...
Here's something that's going to make you feel instantly old: The oldest X’ers are turning 50 in 2014. In a time when all the buzz is about aging Boomers and flailing Generation Y and Millennials (the youngest adult generation is so mythologized that it has...
Miley Cyrus sporting a less raunchy style[/caption]
What can Barack Obama and Miley Cyrus learn from Karl Marx this past week? Maybe they should take to heart a famous quote where he says that the second time a tragedy comes around, it comes as a farce*. That's true whether you're following the footsteps of Madonna or George W Bush.
Were anybody seriously "shocked" at Miley Cyrus' VMA performance? Underwhelmed and disappointed, maybe. I get that people are tired of a sexualized pop-culture where female artists turn to twerking and groping and self-subjugation to male co-performers. I get the fatigue that follows the trite and oh-so-predictable scheme of innocent teen-star turning adult by means of shock performances or other crazy-looking antics. But shocked? In many ways Miley is in the same boat as Lance Armstrong. If predecessors push the benchmark impossibly high (or low) to meet or beat, you've got to go to extreme lengths to be noticed. How in the world is a has-been-Disney-star like Cyrus to compete "shock-wise" with all the Madonnas and Britney Spears out there? Maybe she would have done better choosing a completely different strategy.
I want to see The Great Gatsby. And then I hope Hollywood will churn out ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘Death of a Salesman’ soon after. History rhymes, and once again we’re at this junction in time when the younger generations are reexamining the validity of...
Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a speech by legendary, mother-of-all feminists Gloria Steinem at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center here in Austin. As a mother of three daughters I am anxious to learn if feminism is an ongoing movement that will continue to grow roots into the younger generations or if it is subjected to cyclical patterns where in which the expected roles of women ebb and flow with cultural and political currents. Strauss and Howe's in The Fourth Turning suggest that some cyclicality is at work and note fluctuations between eras dominated by traditional gender roles and other eras when women take on more androgynous fashions and social roles. Cyclical theories will typically emphasize these undulations in social trends, but there is clearly a progressive "upward" movement at least in modern age. During her speech Steinem counteracted the myth of declining feminism, but she also touched on the backlash and the "feminazi"-accusations from extreme anti-feminists like Rush Limbaugh.
I enjoyed the speech, but I must say I was hoping to hear more about her thoughts about the future.
For a child born today, what will the world look like in 2100? This is the topic of a special section of The Futurist, September- October issue. Via scenarios and forecasts from some of the leading expert within foresight, we get a glimpse into what it will mean to be 88 at the dawn of the next century. This is the future of the Homeland generation. Millennials will be 96 to 120 if they are alive and some of them will. Some scenarios make me infer that some Generation X members are still with us as "post-centenarians". Others take the the transhumanist/singulitarian view that we have passed the point where we will be able to live forever.
The trends and emerging issues covered range from energy, climate changes, economic systems, space travel, scientific breakthroughs - particularly in biology and computing – and of course, aging.
Extreme longevity seems to show up in many of the narratives, reflecting long anticipated breakthroughs in medicine, computing and biotechnology. Resource depletion combined with resource scarcity, governmental issues and dwelling patterns are other issues.
The “mood” of these forecasts, or the level of pessimism vs. optimism, seems to be in line with most futurist projections: If and when we can manage to reform ourselves before we totally ruin the planet, it’s going to worse only until it gets better. Similar to cycle theories like the Kondratiev long waves or Strauss and Howe’s generational predictions, we will most likely go through a period of crisis - a period we have already entered - before we enter a new “high period”.
Dr. William Halal and Laura B Huhn from TechCast believe a new high tech era will occur around 2020. This view is similar to that of Olli Hietanen and Marko Ahvenainen, Finland Futures Research Centre, who forecast a Sixth Kondratieff wave (2010 – 2050) based on new innovation and technologies within biotechnology. The Sixth wave differs from the Fifth because of the increasingly rising prices on raw materials and energy. The new paradigm in innovation and production is likely to be within molecular, or synthetic, biology, which will allow us to grow and change structures from raw biological materials. Just think about all the experiments happening with stem cells and organ scaffolding in the labs today! Not to mention biological 3-D printing. Tissue engineering will enable us to grow new organs and artificial meats, even biodegradable polymers to be used in manufacturing. These prospects might be frightening to some, conjuring up 19th and 20th century sci-fi dystopias like Frankenstein and Brave New World. But for most futurists, the unsustainable alternative of status quo is often much scarier!
"Kids nowadays! Hmpf!" Whether you're 5 or 85, at some point you might unwittingly have been dragged into a generational comparison in which your age cohort is made out to look ruder, lazier or more spoiled than the bygone youth of the spokesperson. The statement is often followed up with a sentence that starts with "In my days.." Usually we attribute this type of sentiment to the occasional hissy fits endured by otherwise beloved older relatives whenever the need to blow off some steam escalates to intolerable proportions. And often it is better respond with an approving nod than to go into a drawn-out and probably futile explanation about "how things have changed" and how the old ways of doing things simply won't work anymore. Or we reason that the curmudgeon is probably right anyway, that we're all degenerating under moral standards in free fall.
In Growing up with Princess Inc earlier this year I wrote about growing gender polarization. In the post I discussed the idea that shifts between androgynous and more overtly gendered fashion trends and body ideals are linked to social and economic fluctuations. Generational experts Strauss and Howe explained in The Fourth Turning that in eras when society struggles to recover from crisis, order, stability and traditional values gain momentum. From social science research we know socioeconomic lower classes tend to embrace traditional gender ideals to a greater degree than does the middle class. The middle class on the other hand, possesses economic and educational resources that allow them to push social boundaries without serious negative
Inspired by a string of generational reports from the PEW research center, NPR has recently focused on generational differences in politics and economics. All the stories in their “Generational Politics” segment follow the four generations that currently constitute the voting population. The series looks at typical economic situations given the economic downturn, political leanings, value systems and their projected political sympathies in the 2012 election.
The relationship between age and voter turnout has intrigued political scientists at least since 1960. Two rivaling theories are set out to answer the question of age and political alignment. The answer is likely to be a little bit of both.
