There is a yin and a yang to most trends, though, and this one is not without bad news. As disease screening becomes more prevalent, and more sophisticated, people deemed to be predisposed to particular diseases might be subjected to unnecessary medical procedures. Already we’re seeing healthy women submit voluntarily to radical mastectomies, simply out of the fear that a ‘high risk’ label creates in them.
As the health field grows ever more technical, and as patient choices continue to expand, expect to see a growing cadre of ‘medical advocates’ – professionals hired to guide individuals through the jungle of medical literature, ‘alternative’ medicines and medical options. In many ways, it will be these people who become the new ‘family doctor’ – despite the fact that they are not practising physicians.
Next: Them and Us – Left vs Right
In the short time before the new millennium, expect a major global clash between the left/liberals and the right/conservatives akin to the one associated with capitalism vs/communism and socialism. This new Cold War will be fought with particular intensity over family values issues. The superwoman of the 1980s has been killed by innuendo and a backlash against feminism and the gains of the women’s movement. Next on the right’s seek-and-destroy list are those who want abortion available on demand. The overarching goal: to return religion to the centre of public life.
Throughout the Western world, where family life has been a lesser priority than issues such as economic expansion, taxation and even education, expect social clashes to erupt, with women – particularly working women – bearing the brunt of the blows. Immigrants and minorities also will be the object of increasingly violent debate, as global fears pertaining to everything from job shortages to the loss of national identity and culture fuel the fears of those who face an uncertain future in an entirely new millennium. Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, ultra-Orthodox Jews, and other factions on the religious right will gather force as the millennium approaches, many of them using the Internet as a tool for recruitment, proselytization and denouncing the sins of the world.
Next: Desperately Seeking People Like Me
As a byproduct of this schism between left and right, expect more and more investors and businesses to seek partners with compatible political and social (even religious) points of view. Whether it’s Shell Oil being scrutinized by potential investors or home contractors incorporating scripture into their advertisements, business relationships will be based on far more than the bottom line.
The same sentiment holds true for people who are simply looking for a network, a connection to others like them. In the coming years, geography will become far less important than shared attitudes, beliefs, experiences and values. The Internet ensures that whoever we are and whatever our passion, we have a very good chance of connecting with ‘virtual neighbours’ who will support and sustain us. This trend can be benign (at-home dads forming support networks) or it can be truly dangerous (already White Power activists, conspiracy theorists and holocaust revisionists are gaining strength on the Net). As people become more adept at harnessing the power of cyberspace, these unions will have the potential to change the world, for good or evil.
Next: Privacy is Dead
Of all the pre-millennial fears we face, loss of privacy is perhaps the most common. The truth is privacy is dead. It’s been taken away by the microchip, and it’s not coming back. One interesting side-effect of our lack of privacy is that it will spell freedom for many people. Instead of being ashamed of what we might consider our perversions or ‘unnatural’ impulses, we’ll see more and more just how many people think and behave the way we do. And once we realize that our indiscretions, big and small, are never secret for very long, we’ll be encouraged to allow our wild sides out of the closet a lot more often.
So, while the right will grow stronger and far, far more outspoken, we’ll also see an increased indifference to scandal (how scandalous can something be when ‘everyone’ is doing it?). From infidelity to bondage, from foot fetishes to businessmen wearing women’s undergarments, we’ll see an ‘assumed blindness’ develop to one another’s underbellies, along with a sense of futility regarding efforts to keep humans from being human.
Next: Am I Normal?
Getting inside the heads of ordinary people is an international craze. We now expect every guest who appears on a talk show to bare his or her dirty laundry – and very soul. And the fascinating thing is, just about all of them oblige us! There’s even a family in Sweden that has mounted a camera inside their refrigerator so visitors to their Website can monitor the family’s eating patterns.
Is this trend simply a movement toward exhibitionism? We think it’s much more than that. What we’re seeing is a deep-seated desire for confirmation. We want to know that what we’re doing, thinking and feeling is normal, and we’re looking to an audience of strangers to reassure us that no matter how bizarre our actions or attitudes, there’s someone else who’s far stranger. And as a result of our own loosened tongues, we’re angrily rejecting everyone else’s right to be discreet. (Just consider the backlash against Britain’s Royal Family when their mourning of Diana’s loss didn’t meet the public’s new standards of grief.)
A surge in typeradio – online chat with a moderator-announcer controlling the flow of the dialogue – and online support groups and discussion forums will be one of the more obvious offshoots of this trend. In the political forum, we’ll be willing to forgive every mistake, indiscretion or even crime – as long as we are privy to a detailed and heartfelt public confession or even an angry denial of wrongdoing. What we won’t forgive is the sin of silence.
What’s Next? Trend Bytes for Tomorrow
The remainder of this chapter is filled with trend bytes, our prognostications regarding new products, services and ways of working and living that will develop in the next few years. Some of the ideas may strike you as unfeasible or ill-conceived; others may be exactly in line with your vision of the future. Even the authors disagree as to which of these observations and postulations are most significant. What we all do agree on, however, is that each of the following entries makes for intriguing fodder in our continued effort to discern the possibilities – and, ultimately, the probabilities – of life in the next millennium.
Lifestyle
Simple Pleasures Sewing, quilting bees and other activities from times past will emerge as an antidote to today’s chaotic lifestyles. Look for a revival of such crafts as candle making, wood carving and paper making.
Hobbyist Cooking Staying at home to prepare a full meal will no longer be a customary practice in many households; instead, cooking will be seen as more of a hobby, a way to entertain one’s friends or spend time with one’s family.
Dinner Clubs In some families, dinners will become a bigger priority as parents struggle to connect with their kids and as busy days leave no time to enjoy a relaxed breakfast or lunch. Groups of neighbours will form ‘dinner clubs’, whereby each household is responsible for providing one dinner a week to all five participating families.
Silicon Sex In an age in which real-world sex has become risky, to say the least, many are turning to the relatively safe and frequently anonymous world of silicon sex. Options range from cybersex (in which partners – or groups – engage in explicit, real-time online communication, including chat and/or video) to online pornography, from computerized sex toys to the forthcoming ‘sexbot’. Tomorrow’s schools will incorporate cybersex and online sexual content into their sex-education lesson plans.
Co-parenting Working parents will seek more assistance in raising their children from childless