This one came from a teacher, who told the whole class to read Click, by Faith Popcorn, to understand where the market is going. Faith is a trend hunter (that’s an actual job, apparently) and her idea is that if you spot a trend early, you can “click” with it before everybody else does.
The book has a lot of trends, so I’m writing down the first four here, mostly so I don’t forget them.
Cocooning
People want to do everything from home, working, studying, shopping and making friends without leaving the chair, in a safe little nest away from the mess outside. Some jobs already ask you to have a computer at home so you can work from there.
The catch, according to her, is that home gets so comfy that we stop going out at all. For someone with an IRC nickname, that one hit a little close to home (pun not intended, but I’ll keep it).
Clans
People with the same interests find each other and form little tribes, because being around people who think like you feels safe. She says the internet will be full of these groups, local and global, trading information all day. In Faith’s words, “we are together on this planet”. Our class already has its own website and an IRC channel, so I guess we’re a clan now hehehe…
The adventure of fantasy
We want adventure, but the safe kind. The book quotes Thornton Wilder saying that when we’re safe at home we want adventure, and when we’re in the middle of the adventure we want to be safe at home. So people go looking for adventure with a seatbelt on, in travel, exotic food, video games and virtual worlds.
Theeeen I remembered my plan of crossing South America in a buggy and it all made sense.
The revenge of pleasure
People are tired of rules and want their reward now, so they go after whatever feels good and worry about the consequences later. Faith calls it revenge because it’s the payback for all the stress we put up with, and the more time people spend in that feel good zone, the less they want to leave it.
None of the four is good or bad by itself, the book just says they’re coming and that whoever sees them first wins. I still don’t know if I want to be the guy who spots the trend or the guy who builds the stuff for it…