Most of us barely cope with the day-to-day onslaught that technology brings. Everything is faster, but not necessarily better.
The inaugural, 2007 Flux Trend Review was held in Jo’burg recently and offered delegates an opportunity to hit the pause button and get a sense of “the state we’re in” by editing out the barrage of information flung at us.
Unsurprisingly, several speakers noted the impact of technology on our lives. In Japan techno-savy teens are called “oyayubi sedai“, the thumb generation. They use their thumbs so frequently for typing into their cellphones that they now use them, rather than their index fingers, to point and to press buzzers.
Popular culture expert Randall Abrahams identified the quest for fame as an overriding cultural trend. “It’s no longer good enough just to be wealthy, people crave celebrity,” he said. This has exacerbated the phenomenon of people being famous because they’re famous, and blogging is just another by-product of this quest.
Abrahams coined the phrase “reflexive irony” when describing celebrity hungry youths when they use social networks like Facebook. They only present versions of themselves that they want the world to see: in the same way that politicians put out carefully mediated versions of themselves. News channels such as BBC, Sky and CNN have, in effect, become our daily dose of reality TV. Even issues like global warming are being used by celebrities, musicians and politicians in their pursuit of the media spotlight, and in the process they turn worthwhile causes into mere fads.
Studies show that technology is making us stupid, noted the editor of Stuff magazine, Toby Shapshak. We no longer remember phone numbers since we started storing them in our cellphones, while email, because of its immediacy, has subverted our sense of priority, making us less productive.
We are blurring the boundaries between work and play, and are now feeling the effects.
Media consumption habits are changing rapidly and, warned Shapshak, advertisers will lose out if they don’t keep up to speed with the changes. He predicts the death of television as we know it in 10 years, pointing out that Rupert Murdoch is selling his satellite TV stations and buying into social networking sites like MySpace.
In the United States 45% of content consumed by teens on the internet is generated on blogs. Google has been quick to spot the gap. When content is posted on YouTube or Facebook, it belongs to Google and they sell advertising against it.
Shapshak believes that the open source movement, which allows users to download software and improve it, is one of the greatest innovations of the 21st century. Driven by people like Mark Shuttleworth, it’s a form of digital socialism, a rare occurrence in a species obsessed with ownership.
Media expert Irwin Manoim spoke about how the changing media landscape is affecting print. Manoim argues that newspaper owners should regard it as a very real threat, because this 24-hour medium can reach its audience in new ways, such as podcasts, video clips and blogs.
In South Africa, traditional titles are losing readers, but new titles such as Die Son, the Daily Sun and the Zulu-language newspaper Isoleweze in KwaZulu-Natal are growing spectacularly.
Another trend is free news. Locally The Citizen is handing out free copies of Citizen Metro on buses, which has the potential to reach more than 80 000 readers daily, while the Sunday Times is delivering a free daily edition to its subscribers. Whether they succeed depends on if they can be produced cheaply enough, and whether retail advertisers buy into them.
A target group of most sectors is the so-called black diamonds, the emerging black middle class. This sector has a combined spending power of R180-billion and marketers are eager to penetrate it. Siphiwe Mpye of Random Window said that “brand me” is important to this group: self-improvement is a trend, as is profiling oneself on the social networks such as Facebook.
Mpye said that this is a market in transition. Their consumption habits are similar to those of whites, but their identity is black. Their values have the trappings of capitalism, but traditional values hold strong. There’s a desire to own property, but also a certain amount of guilt associated with having left the townships and increased pressure to give back to their communities.
Sixty-eight percent of black diamonds own property, said Ronald Ennik, MD of Pam Golding Gauteng, and investors should follow the black money. Prices in suburbs close to the townships have grown by more than 20%, as have areas such as Midrand, which is close to the highways that lead to the townships.
So what are the property trends for the next few years? The black middle class will help drive the market, but not in Cape Town, which is still perceived as the last bastion of white elitism. The 2010 World Cup is likely to induce a mood of confidence, a key driver of property trends, but this sentiment could be undermined by crime and political tensions.
A key theme of the 2007 Flux Review was interconnectivity, and Professor Linda Richter of the Human Sciences Research Council, Ferial Haffajee of the Mail & Guardian and columnist Justice Malala provided a sobering assessment of the political and social state we’re in.
Richter, who heads up the “Birth to Twenty” project in Soweto, said sub-Saharan Africa will soon experience a “youth bulge”, with the youth outnumbering the elderly and the young who depend on them. We’re the last continent to experience this phenomenon and need to follow the lead of countries in South-East Asia, which prepared carefully for their youth bulge and as a result managed to grow their economies by more than 25%. So what should we be doing?
Education is fundamental, but there is an urgent need to keep the youth “inside” the system. Despite tertiary education there is a disturbing average gap of two years before postgraduates find employment. We lose many of our youths during this period and need to provide second chances, like “catch-up” education and re-training. Youngsters should be kept out of prison, and we should be guided by the principles of restoration and reconnection. We need to get this right, because if we don’t the fall-out will haunt us for a long time to come.
Black youth still bear the brunt of unemployment and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is the widest in the world.
We need to support literacy campaigns and champion media freedom. We should also push for changes to our electoral system, so that the nation votes for a new president, not 3 900 delegates at the ANC conference.
As the great succession battle takes centre stage, South Africa is increasingly in a state of political flux. Since 1994 we have built a great country with a growing economy, but we are now at the crossroads, said Malala, who is also publisher of Johncom’s 51 magazines. What is needed is for the ANC to rise above the infighting and to deliberate properly on what sort of country we want.
He said two people to watch over the next few months are ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe and Joel Netshitenzhe, ANC policy adviser. Both have put common sense ahead of personal gain, are trusted by most ANC factions, and are not obsessed with moneymaking. However, the man most likely to do well at the ANC’s December conference? Jacob Zuma. We all wait with bated breath.
The 2007 Flux Trend Review ended on a contemplative note: the importance of slow thought in a fast world — taking time to observe, and, more importantly, making time for reflective thought rather than decision-making on the hop.
Trend forecasting is assumptive, and is rapidly becoming obsolete in the 21st century. Market research, based solely on statistics, also doesn’t provide the human story, which is now pivotal in business.
Understanding “the state we’re in” today will provide the tools to plot tomorrow’s journey. Wisdom is after all, information refined.
We just need to eliminate the spam.
Top trends
Dion Chang’s top 15 trends/insights gleaned from the 2007 Flux Trend Review
1. Machines already control us: we now desperately need to learn how to manage them.
2. We are creating and living in a virtual world: we are slowly losing our need for physical connectivity and tactile appreciation. The social impact of this is immense.
3. South Africa is the sixth-largest user of Facebook on the planet: this shows that we are not only techno-savy, but also have a youth culture that is increasingly becoming disengaged from face-to-face social interaction.
4. “Reflexive irony” is the cornerstone of popular culture: everyone has learnt to present an edited version of themselves (especially on SNS), so our realities and perceptions of each other are becoming increasingly warped and unreal.
5. Brand Me: traditional marketing templates are becoming obsolete — the product no longer defines the consumer — the consumer defines the product.
6. Location-based marketing: the individual is now able to “choose” what information he/she wants to receive.
7. Free news: free newspapers and the internet are altering the media landscape drastically. It’s still about spreading the news, but the way in which it is consumed and accessed is changing rapidly.
8. The “open source movement”: free software is going to change the technology landscape dramatically. It is a form of “digital socialism” that allows anyone to download, improve and share, software for free.
9. The youth bulge: we are entering a phase where youths outnumber the older generation (with the impact of HIV/Aids exacerbating the situation). We are the last continent on the planet to experience this cycle, and need to plan for it as they did with great success in South-East Asia.
10. Densification of the suburbs: we need to prepare for a new lifestyle in South Africa. In urban areas, a mix of retail, business and residential will become more pronounced and the suburbs will follow suit.
11. “Black diamonds” are breaking the rules: This market does not follow the property mantra of “location, location, location” when buying real estate, but is led more by its connections and obligations to its communities. Oh, and they also dislike the term, “black diamonds” intensely.
12. Living in glass boxes: a strong trend in décor. Open-plan living is now a way of life. Walls and storage units are now being made of glass, which enables you to see your favourite/regularly used objects and have easy access to them.
13. Fashion and the Zietgeist: fashion is slowly returning to its 20th-century function as a form of social commentary. The fashion industry has been identified as having the second-fastest creative cycle after technology, so is now an industry being viewed as having more relevance than mere handbags and shoes.
14. Eco narcissism: 2007 has become the year of the cause, but celebrities, politicians, actors and musicians are using the environment/Africa/global warming as a launch pad to enhance their public profiles.
15. The very real need for a holistic perspective: we approach life and business in the 21st century with tunnel vision and are forgetting the interconnectivity of all things — to our detriment.
For regular trend updates visit: www.fluxtrends.co.za