The Future Ain't What It Used to Be

by Mary Meehan and Iconoculture

Book Overview

Describes new behaviors, including themeparking, zentrepreneurism, beehiving, and bunkering. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573220809
• ISBN13: 9781573220804
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.8" x 9.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A wacky encyclopedia of pop culture!

This wacky encyclopedia of pop culture makes E. D. Hirsh's, dictionary of Cultural Literacy seem like a period piece. Meehan, Samuel and Abrahamson have outsmarted the smarty pants of trend watchers. They offer 40 transforming trends of the future and describe them within the context of America's 10 passion points: mind, body, spirit, experience, identity, society, nature, relationships, fear and technology. The author/trend watchers describe future phenomenon. Coined with new vocabulary, a sample of the cultural trends are: "virtual vertigo", the society-wide values breakdown experienced by Americans as a sense of dislocation and restlessness; "zentrepreneurism", the fusion of personal vision and professional mission, typically with activism as instrumental part; and "technomorphing", the effects of warp-speed technological change on our lives and translation of such change in human terms. Others trends that can inform the marketing moguls who should read this book are: "gaia", the symbiotic relationship between humans and the Earth, and the belief that the planet is a living, breathing, feeling organism; and, "cultural infidelity", proactive interest in experiencing multiple cultures and new cultural hybrids grounded in popular and consumer culture. Readers of this book can also culturally climax in the marketing opportunities identified as "iconogasms." The new economy seems to be the motivator behind the tidbits of trend wisdom contained in this wonderfully hyper and often irreverent entertaining read. Therefore, there the cultural climate of the "have-nots" of the future received little attention. Could it be that the authors subconsciously adopted another one of Yogi Berra's often used quotes, "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded?"