10 Trends for 2006+

By Ross Dawson on March 31, 2006 | Permalink

Future Exploration Network Chief Futurist Richard Watson, within our sister organization NowandNext, has just come out with what will be an annual report. 2006+ 10 Trends: Predictions & Provocations is through Richard’s generosity available here as a free download (usually £35), and Richard is allowing any use of his material with acknowledgement. The ten trends Richard explores in the report are:
1. Anxiety
2. Connectedness
3. Speeding-up
4. Mobility
5. Convergence
6. Privacy
7. Nostalgia
8. Localisation
9. Authenticity
10. Happiness
He then goes on to explore specific sector trends, including society & culture, government & politics, media & communications, money & finance, healthcare & well-being, travel & tourism, and far more.
Just a tiny smattering of the juicy tidbits from the 64-page report:

* In the UK the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) now has more members than the three main political parties combined.
* Reason magazine recently sent out 40,000 personalized copies of its magazine, each with a circled aerial photograph of the subscriber’s house on the cover, and detailed information about that subsciber’s neighbors.
* 42% of the US workforce is unmarried.
* More young people voted on American Pop Idol than in the last US Federal election. But politicians in Lithuania gave away drinks at polling stations, to help increase voting from 23% to 65%.
* At Harvard University, 75% of students support the armed forces, compared to 20% in 1975.
* 36% of high-school students believe the US government should approve news stories prior to publication.
* In 1900 Americans slept 9.0 hours per night, today they sleep 6.9 hours a night.
* It took 30 years for Japan to build to 17 million outbound trips a year, but only 5 years for China. There are 800 million internal trips in China each year, similar to the number on the rest of the planet combined.
* The MTV Starzine magazine, produced by MTV and Nokia, consists entirely of text and photo submission by mobile phones from readers.

Stacks more insights, trends, predictions, and observations in the report.