David Zach, futurist

Fads, Trends & Principles: How to Divide & Conquer the Future

Fads, Trends & Principles: How to Divide & Conquer the Future 

by David Zach, futurist

Download FTP Handout-3-Zach

When looking at the world, you can divide much of it into Fads, Trends or Principles. A little mantra for this is that we should Play with Fads, Work with Trends, and Live by Principles. This is easier said than done because in modern times we are too often Seduced by Fads, Ignorant of Trends and Resistant to Principles.

Fads

Fads are all about being in a moment in time, particularly to enjoy that moment. In that sense, they are very nice things because they are very human things. Fads can burn if they are held too close, seen as truth, or embraced as a lifestyle. If put in their proper place, fads are great. 

Because of our economic and social obsession with trends, it’s not really surprising that there’s an almost equal and opposite reaction in our modern obsession with fads. Too much of anything will cause a reaction, often in the opposite direction. Even worse, we often suppose that fads are trends. Fads are marketed as the next wave of the future, oddly one right after another. 

You can never get enough of what you really don’t need. 

Eric Hoffer

Fads often go with adolescence — to do something different, to be bored with the same old thing, especially when the culture and economy join forces to help convince you that new is better, and old is, well, old. They are also about attention– people who start or lead fads are all about capturing attention. Why would someone embrace a fad if no one else would notice? In an attention-based economy (only when I get your attention can I get your money) fads are lucrative because of the constant turnover of what is cool. 

There is nothing culturally more subversive than the modern commerce of quick turnover in ideas. 

Philip Rieff

Fads give the illusion of progress. They are anchors that stop movement, discouraging it, except when it is to move away from whatever is expected of you and rejecting what’s already in place. Fads are less about creativity than they are about reaction. Art and artists are often quick to reject the traditional in favor of their new visions. Fads are popular with modern artists and that attitude spreads into business and culture, though they would be the first to deny it. Fads pretend to be trends.

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation. 

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

We should play with fads because they can be fun and help us to enjoy life. From styles of clothing to styles of culture, they are about being in the moment of life and reveling in being alive. Just keep them in perspective.

We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of either. 

G. K. Chesterton

Do you have enough fads in your life so that you’re not boring? (The Church Lady on SNL had no fads.) Do you have so many fads in your life that you’re irrelevant? Choose wisely.

Trends 

Trends are about movement. Fads are like the waves on the water. They rock the boat and so they capture our attention. Trends are like the currents which move the boat. Currents are more difficult to see, but have far more power. One can navigate by learning more about the currents of trends and stop obsessing about the waves upon the water. 

Trends are more adult-like because they take longer-term attention span to notice. They often involve a sense of investment, whether that is with a long-term stock, the growth or decline of a company or even the way that we invest in the rearing of our children. They take time and if we reacted to every little change with our investments, we cause more harm than good. 

We work with trends because that’s where our work will do the most good - long-term thinking applied to the notion of leveraging our resources and efforts to multiply the outcome. If you can pull some fads in to help achieve this goal, trends can work even better.

I don't set trends. I just find out what they are and I exploit them.  

Dick Clark

 

Principles

Principles are about the eternal. Things that don’t change, shouldn’t change, can’t change. These are difficult to defend in an age where many loud people say that there are no eternals, no truths. I believe it is true to say that they are wrong. 

Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.  

Groucho Marx

This is not to say that principles are carved in stone. The fact is that they ebb and flow. In some eras, some principles are more regarded than in other eras. For instance, ask yourself which is more important, freedom or equality? You’ll probably have an answer, but you can easily find someone who will disagree with you. This is because freedom and equality are principles. They are both true at the same time and yet they are opposites. It’s a paradox, and a delightful one at that. There are times when freedom is more important and at other times where equality seems to be favored. One without the other would either be a jungle or a dictatorship. 

Just as fads anchor you to a moment in time, principles free you from time. Principles are not simply about this time, they are about all time. We can have the sense of principles being more elder-oriented because for too many of us, we don’t seem to appreciate them until we’ve grown tired of everything else that competes with them. They’re not limited just to elders as we have all met youngsters who seem wise beyond their years. 

We grow conservative as we grow old it is true. But we do not grow conservative because we find so many new things spurious. We grow conservative because we find so many old things genuine. 

G. K. Chesterton

Fads, Trends & Principles in the Modern World

Fads, trends and principles can be used as lenses through which to look at what’s going on around you. They are not always distinct from each other, as there’s often a little bit of principle inside of a fad. Trends are often revealed first through the fads that show up in a culture or an economy. Principles are often obscured by the modern obsession with both fads and trends, and the popular naivete that say principles either don’t exist or shouldn’t . . .  

Fads are about attention. 

Given the vague statistic that the average person in the modern world encounters several thousand advertising messages a day, your ability to get your message through depends a lot on knowing which fads are capturing attention at this moment. When you’re trying to gain the attention of a younger person, be that your child or your new worker, are you able to use the right words, images and metaphors that work with them, without trying to be like them, of course? It’s not a fad that the younger generation easily sees and rejects efforts to manipulate them. 

Trends are about intention. Which trends do you follow? Which do you ignore? Once you know about a trend, more than likely you need to form an opinion about whether it is useful. Which fads can you use to pull others into either supporting or resisting a trend? In navigating current trends, have a sense of direction and endurance so you can anticipate how to use it in your favor. 

Have an understanding of both investment and delayed gratification with trends. Because trends take time, one has to have a sense of the endgame — where is this trend likely to lead us five, ten, even fifty years into the future? In the Western world, we have been so seduced by the short-term and quarterly results that we are quite fad-like in our planning. The Eastern cultures might teach us about having a much longer sense of time. Our own history, in terms of what we have forgotten or choose to ignore, can also teach about the value of long-term trends as well. 

Principles are about truth. 

Imagine that you were asked to begin a document with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . “ how might you write that document? Do you believe that anything is true - that truth even exists - or do you believe that everything is relative and one so-called truth is as good any other? 

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principles, stand like a rock.  

Thomas Jefferson

Unlike fads, which have tremendous marketing budgets behind them, principles are often left on their own and are not as easy to understand such that we easily are distracted from them in the day-to-day, busy world. In this world, the spoils go to the distractors — those best able to grab and hold your attention, and thereby gain access to your money — are the ones who get the gold and get to rule. 

Only intuition can protect us from the most dangerous individual of all, the articulate incompetent. 

Robert Bernstein 

Not all principles are to be equally valued, just like not all change is forward. The great struggle of our age is to define what should change and what should stay the same. It’s often said that in the future we’ll need more science and math in order to compete in the global economy. That’s true. 

What is even more true is that if we are to thrive in the future, we will need to study more philosophy, theology, history and biography. Science cannot tell us why we are here and what is the purpose of life. These four subjects may not be able to answer such questions either, but at least they lead us in that direction and that’s a very good foundation from which to start. 

Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty. 

Will Durant

AIA-NYS speech on Fads, Trends & Principles

Just had a lot of fun as the keynote speaker for the architects of New York state here in Rochester, NY. (Beautiful Wings of Progress art deco building out my hotel window - as great inspiration - see photo below.)  

A variety of handouts can be found here. My book Worth Remembering can be found here. 

Towards the end of the talk, explaining how elegance and eloquence are two of the most important concepts for surviving the so-called Age of Information, shared with them some poetry that kids back in 1903 had to memorize including Rienzi's Address to the Romans. It's sad to understand that if grade schoolers could have once memorized such long poems, why can't they do the same today - and what are the children memorizing today and/or being distracted by today? 

Here's the first slide:

So, to the applause and laughter of the audience, I showed them what tweeting would have done to such poetry limited to 140 characters - no more, no less. Actually, much, much less. 

Take a look through the link to see what has been lost in translation over the past 100 years.And so goes with what is sometimes called progress. 

Data Visualization, Data Complexity

I keep thinking there's got to be a better way than just more and more data for us to plow through. Here's an example of Visual Complexity via Gizmodo.com of fascinating data visualization that offers some hope, especially with sense that design applied to data should reveal refinement and a sense of the aesthetic. 

Can data be beautiful and give us a sense of "Ah!" as opposed the the growing sense of "Ugh!" — one can only hope and encourage the information architects to focus not just on measurement, but whimsy as well. 

Futurist Gets You Thinking article, South Bend Tribune

Nice article in the South Bend Tribune about a recent talk I gave in Elkhart, IN for local business, industry and labor attendees. With an 18.8% unemployment rate there, the future looms a lot closer than it might in other areas of the country. 

Quoting one attendee: "This was the first futurist I've heard that actually talked about a reliance on a tradition or the past." 

Instead of everyone in these economically depressed areas being recruited into the agency of change, we might just need a few of them to be agents of tradition - helping to safeguard the treasures of the past, be they communities, values or perhaps just even little bits of common sense.  

If we treat the past more like a toolbox instead of an outdated anchor, we might build better futures. 

Modern Times Poem by David Zach, Futurist

I keep getting request for this poem that comes near the end of my talk. I did not know it was a poem, but if they're going to call it that, who am I to resist? (Find a handout poster of this here.)

This is about the world that we give to our children. They are not fooled (like we are) and they see the world for what it is. Just as children are often not fooled by magicians, too often we are. The magicians of today are everywhere, constantly distracting us from what we once knew to be vital. 

Why do we treat unhappiness in children as the most frightening of diseases and must be treated with medications?

When everything is possible, is that a sign of a world that is vital, optimistic and hopeful - or is it a sign of a world that is tired and wants to sleep? 

We are modern, we are distracted, we are clever. 

Children are the message we send to the future. What are we trying to say?

Modern times

  Nothing can wait.

Nothing can satisfy. 

Nothing can last.  

No one can be unhappy.

No one can be judged.

No one can be trusted.

Nothing is hidden.

Nothing is forbidden. 

Nothing is certain.

Everything is a need.

Everything is a choice. 

Everything is possible. 

Pop Up Businesses have Popped Up before

I was looking at my website traffic and someone in Italy was searching on the term pop up business and thereby found my site. 

So, I clicked on that person's search and found 771 hits (most not connected to our idea, of course) but found this one from Lubicom Marketing in 2006 that had me smiling. The author is comparing today's trends with some rather old notions of PUBs. Pushcarts indeed. 

My father once told me that there are very few new ideas out there, just recombinations of existing ideas along with rediscovery of old ones that we might have forgotten. 

Here's a blog called Boomer Matters exploring some of the questions the PUB idea presents: 

Here's one also from 2006 from Springwise (a trend spotting website) with the clever term: Vanchising.

These sorts of things convince me that good ideas are seldom unique to one individual or another. They "pop-up" everywhere. The curious challenge is to try to discern what does it take for those great ideas to actually get manifested? What sorts of technology breakthroughs cause someone to finally recognize that the roadblock that might have held them back is now gone or can now be bypassed? 

Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog - Gigapan Explored

For some marvelous exploration of the Gigapan technology [see previous post], visit Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog. Zoom in and zoom out to get the full potential of the photography. 

This is great stuff. Applying this technology to scientific exploration, (or architectural, or geographic, etc.) holds amazing potential. Pull it together with the likes of Google Earth, GPS, RFID, tagging and the like and you can start to see how everything can be mapped and easily accessed, either virtually or in person. I'm cautious and yet can't help but marvel at it all. He suggests Google Earth include a Geology layer and like many innovation, such features are often developed by users themselves who lead innovation from its best source, the imagination. 

Gigapan Photography: We Are All Public Now

Under the category of Paranoid? Who Told You I Was Paranoid? check out Gigapan.

The pictures are taken with a Canon digital camera mounted on a robotic base developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Lab and NASA Ames Research, to result in a 1,474 megapixel image. [ed. note: this was corrected per comment posted below.] Double click on an area of the picture to view a detailed area shot or individual. Click and drag the cursor to scan over the picture.

Where once it as possible to be anonymous in a crowd, that will no longer be. You can be spotted and watched, followed. In the hands of the good guys, we can easily track the bad guys. Unless the bad guys get ahold of the same technology, then the bad guys can track the good guys. 

Who watches the watchers, indeed. 

Additional note: I do think this is marvelous technology and we've only just scratched the surface of where this stuff can take us. I keep being reminded of the line from Milton Friedman, The power to do good is also the power to do harm. The technology is not the problem, the problem lies within the hands of those with the technology and how they view their ability extended by this technology. Few people ever believe their actions will result in evil. Most evil is done by people with the best of intentions. Naiveté seems more popular than ever before. 

Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge

An interesting website about this book Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge the founder of the design firm IDEO. Lots of good notions of how we interact with designed things. The interviews are interesting. We take so much for granted regarding the depth and complexity of design in everyday things

Business Week: The Future of Innovation

Well, it would seem that this whole futurist thingie is taking off and even Business Week is asking futurists for their opinions. The writer Damian Joseph asked what sorts of innovations and inventions will come about because of the recession. I read somewhere along the line an article suggesting that the USA will get through this economic mess faster and better than other economies because we've got so many people who know how to start over and reinvent themselves. They're not as held back by legacy concepts. I'm certain that people here can reinvent themselves but today with so few connections to the past and any sense of enduring principles, I wonder if they can still reinvent themselves with any endurance. It's one thing not to be bound by history. It's quite another to dismiss it. If someone reinvents themselves are they basing the invention upon something specific or upon whatever has caught their attention most recently? 

Lily Tomlin once said that, When I was growing up I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific. 

Pop-up Businesses is one idea (so named by Damian Joseph) that I'm having fun with - as are a few reporters knocking on my email door wanting to know more. The basic idea is that because of improvements with logistics, technology, systems management and a strong sense amongst youth to constantly change what they pay attention to - that we may see in the future businesses that identify a need (or want) in the marketplace, gather together people and resources to fulfill that need and then just as quickly disband and move on to something else. How will that all work? I haven't the faintest idea, but I'm willing to bet that there are people out there who will know how to do it. 

I first started playing with this idea after working with the Self-Storage industry. Temporary space usage for more than just storage may be ideal for this sort of business model. Take a look at storage facilities and you'll now find a lot more than just sheds with garage doors. 

For each objection that someone can identify that would prevent the Pop-up Business notion from being successful, find alternatives around each roadblock. The sort of problem solving that designers are taught is the key here. Don't think of how it can't work, think of what will be necessary so that it can work. What are the upsides? What are the downsides?