Okay, it’s that time again, time to take a peek into the future and see what is happening, and about to happen in our world. This time, these peeks into the future come from an excellent new book called Microtrends Squared: The New Small Forces Driving Today’s Big Disruptions, by Mark Penn.
Author Penn, has spent over 40 years polling, advising, and marketing, including being the chief strategist for the Clintons’ presidential campaigns (both) and has made it his business to know what is going on in the world today, and how it will affect the world tomorrow.
Besides checking out trends that are changing the future, he also looks back to let us know what happened, and why. Why the Millennials lost their position of influence in the latest election; while the “old white guys” made a comeback and claimed theirs. How young millennial women are choosing “second fiddle” husbands, who are willing to take a back seat to the ambition, passion and yes higher earnings of their more successful wives. Or, how the internet and social media are playing us. While we think it’s pretty neat that Netflix tracks our movie choices and Amazon our purchasing choices and then makes recommendations based on those choices when what they are really doing is giving us the more expensive choices that they want to sell. How Google is tracking everything we do including our e-mails and using that information in big data algorithms that they are selling to the right parties who pay big bucks for them
He discusses how people are waiting until they are much older to get married, if they get married at all. And, how open marriages are no longer just a product of Hollywood celebrities. Or, how bisexuals are the most persecuted of all of the alternative lifestyle preferences being, disliked by both hetero and homosexuals and how three times more women than men are bisexual.
All surprising and fun to read stuff, but let’s get to the future, the cool stuff that companies are working on. There is a company in California that is ready with the chip that it will insert in your body, no worries, just under the skin, that can completely and continually monitor your physical well-being making surprise events such as heart attacks and strokes things of the past. Or, the company that is producing artificial retinas and corneas making blindness, a thing of the past, and glasses obsolete. Then, there are the drones; those beloved gadgets that will do everything from deliver packages in no time at all, to helping your golf game by finding your ball and hovering over it so you’ll never lose one again; or walk your kids to school, so you can watch them every step of the way; Or EMT drones that can deliver emergency easy to use vital equipment to bystanders at an accident sire trying to help the victim. We are right around the corner from having “drone hives” in our neighborhoods resting and being charged until you call one on your phone to go down to CVS and pick up your prescription. Or standing by, as your own personal neighborhood watchdog, making sure there are no home break-ins, or suspicious characters walking around.
Now, let’s get into the really scary but amazing stuff, like the development of so called “Super Navy Seals” where through electronic stimulation of the brain by shocking, the Seals response time becomes faster and more super-powered so that they are able to maintain peak performance for up to twenty- four hours! No, I am not making this up. By using this type of technology, law enforcement officers could do their jobs more effectively by using super powers, like X-ray vision to see what a person is carrying on them and super smell to smell things like gunpowder and then using their super intelligence to determine if someone has a gun or not.
Right now, as we speak 3D printers, are bioprinting new skins cells for burn victims as well as developing all kinds of body parts. True story, one of my neighbors had to have three inches of her jaw bone removed last week and it was replaced with a part printed by a 3D printer.
Scientist at M.I.T. are listening to music using magnets embedded in their ears actin as their own personal earphones.
And so, it goes, and these are only a few of the predictions that author Penn writes about in his fascinating new book, Heck, I hesitate to call them predictions, because most of them are happening right now! Remember, when we thought that rockets that go into space and come back safely to be reused was a crazy idea? Or how about those self-driving cars anther crazy idea right? Well, stay tuned because the best is yet to come. It’s only common sense.
