S P E C I A L I S S U E
|
BY CELESTE
RYAN You quickly make a mental note to set an appointment for him with the family vitamin counselor, not knowing that Michael doesn't have a deficiency, he's really an enigma of a very highly paid partner in one of the top 10 advertising firms based in, well, every major country of the world, whose not-so-highly-paid account executives have successfully nabbed another "lifer," a lifetime customer. What you should know, as you blatantly ignore your son and instead drive up to the entrance of Country Side Plaza in your town, Anywhere, is that it's called brand loyalty, and not only are you hooked (after all, this is your third new Toyota Camry since 1994) to certain brand names and logos, but so are most 5-year-olds these days, not to mention . . . Jasper, your 14-year-old Generation Y son from a previous marriage, who claims to have found his inner self and higher calling already, plays football, watches Dawson's Creek reruns online from his laptop during class, and has a stockholders' meeting tomorrow evening. He now plops into the seat beside you, after spending the afternoon at the mall with friends using his weekly discretionary funds, and inquires about supper. "Dad's turn to cook," you say as you suddenly remember your promise to swing by HealthMart to pick up tofu burgers and vanilla-flavored Rice Dream milk. Twenty minutes later you pull into your driveway and see your neighbor, Mrs. Washington, digging potatoes in her backyard. She waves you over to give you some beets, carrots, four ears of corn, and an acorn squash that she grew herself. "When are you guys going to plant a lawn garden?" she chides. "The only way you can guarantee that food is organic and clean these days is to grow it yourself. Besides, HealthMart," she glances at your bag, "is way too expensive." Mrs. Washington and her family, the only regular churchgoers in your culturally diverse community, have cut excess costs wherever possible since her husband, downsized from his company after 12 years of service, started a home-based business. To make ends meet and help with household duties, her spry but elderly mom has moved into a small ground-level apartment Mr. Washington built for her on the back of the house, and her daughter Janelle, who has a 2-year-old, recently moved back home and is taking college courses online. Their oldest daughter, Nicola, 30, who hasn't gotten married yet, is living in a boardinghouse in Devonshire, England, with 14 other people-singles and families-and reportedly has cooking duty only once every two weeks. "Before I get married," you recall hearing Nicola, a medical resident who runs a free clinic in her community on Saturdays, say last year, "I have to get rid of all these college loans." Once inside the house you wash your hands and sit for supper, thanking God for keeping you sane, supplying clean drinking water, and helping you find more time to spend with yourself and your family. Welcome to the new millennium. The More Things
Change . . . You'll go back to work Monday morning. Your cell phone will ring. A new fast-food restaurant will go up on the corner in a matter of days. The second half of Ling's school year will begin. And life and business will go on as usual. Lest you get too comfortable, take note. Things will change, and not just in the ways you expect. It's the end of the world as we know it. The end of the industrial age and the beginning of a technologically dominated renaissance we'll live to see unfold. Call it McWorld. Call it the Digital Era. It's early in the twenty-first century, and we've just given birth to the global age. Here are a few trends noted by futurists and analysts busy spurring on millennium fever: Technology "We'll be able to see the face behind the voice," says Gerald Celente, a researcher and author.1 "When you communicate like that, factoring in the psychological and social component, you have more of an interpersonal relationship." Celente says that not only will the "televideophony" be accepted much like the answering machine was in the past two decades, but it will be valuable to families with relatives living far away. The new visual dimension will also enable salespeople to do product demonstrations without traveling, look the person in the eye, and understand whether or not they've connected with the person or if he or she is turned off. As more and more people, downsized because their company moved production to another country to lower overhead costs, affected by work decentralization, underemployment, or bitten by the bug that makes them finally decide to try their hand at home-based business, as 12 percent of those downsized did in 1996, long-distance communication will be more like television. And, according to Celente, this will cause face-to-face business communication to become increasingly uncommon-and therefore increasingly important.2 Business "The twenty-first century workplace will demand people with initiative, creativity, flexibility, willingness to participate, information technology-literacy, and global mindedness," wrote A. G. Stell Kafalas, of the University of Georgia. In the U.S. alone, 25 million of the 26 million new jobs in the first decade of the new millennium will be in the service sector. Retail sales, nursing, system analysis, tourism, and personal and home-care aid top the lists.3 Traditional hierarchical organizations will give way to a variety of organizational forms, including networks of specialists and megamergers with global connections. Already 51 of the world's 100 largest economies are that of corporations. General Motors is bigger than Denmark, Ford bigger than South Africa, and Toyota bigger than Norway. Wal-Mart, the company that recently added nearly 400 new branches, is already larger than 161 countries, and growing.4 We can expect more mergers of large companies, banks, and financial institutions, notes futurist and author Tom Sine in his book Mustard Seed Versus McWorld, and with them will come corporate monopoly and increased political influence by an elite few. Lifestyle Technotribalism will be an early sign of changed values, when disenchanted achievers and young retirees move to remote or rural places to balance country life with high technology.5 They and the rest of the world will search for clean air, clean water, and clean food, and when they fail to find it, edible lawns will spring up in our communities as people work to stretch their incomes and avoid chemically grown, environmentally engineered, cancer-causing food. And according to the World Bank, to fight the growing need for clean water, the world will spend $600 billion to augment water reserves in the coming years.6 Although middle-class life won't necessarily slow down, look for a wave of voluntary simplicity to emerge giving rise to the sale of health food, alternative medicine, vitamin counselors, and what Celente dubs longevity centers. A variation of places such as the Oklahoma-based Lifestyle Center of America will combine spas, universities, health clinics, and resorts to provide help to the 71 percent of overweight Americans who are still trying to get healthy. Despite the Nikes, golf clubs, and sport utility vehicles we picked up in the exercise craze of the late twentieth century, 90 percent7 of us are still out of shape. With the world population topping 6 billion in October 1999, we must also prepare ourselves to live in an increasingly diverse world. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that by 2010, Hispanics would be the majority in California, and in a 1997 New York Times article, (noted in Sine's book) Katherine Seelye says that by 2050, we can expect that Whites will account for only 53 percent of the U.S. population, meaning it won't be long until the U.S. becomes the first non-White Western nation.8 Family Celente expects that by the year 2010, 31 million adults will be living alone.10 Loaded with college and credit card debt, many will revive the boardinghouse trend of the sixties and seventies, forming families in cohousing units that cut individual expenses, allow more time for community service, foster simplicity, and leave less time for loneliness. These new millennium "families" will share expenses, cooking duties, and friendship. Extended families will form when young adults return to the nest with young children, and older parents move in to help. With the first baby boomers retiring in 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted a 138 percent growth in the home-health-aid industry by 2005, making elder care a lucrative career move. And you can expect them to be around for a while. Life magazine reports that in 1900 life expectancy was 47 years, that today one can expect to live on average to 76 years, and that by 2025 about 20 percent will be 65 or older. "For the first time," writes Stephanie Coontz in her article, "a generation of adults must plan for the needs of both their parents and their children."11 Because of the increased life expectancy of the 78 million boomers born between 1946 and 1964 and the fact that they will be less incapacitated than the preceding generations, they'll move in and help out the family. Home education will increase as healthy grandparents not only pull their weight by baby-sitting, as 44 million did for an average of 650 hours in 1994, but, as the equivalent of tribal elders who were valued and revered back in hunter-gatherer societies, will share their wisdom and knowledge.12 Celente says that with high education costs and increased online access in the home, interactive and online learning will revolutionize education. This will also be fostered by the rise in highly individualized culture and career tracks. Religion In his book Fragmented Gods, Reginald Bibby says that in 1957 you could have found 53 percent of Canadians in church on a Sunday morning; today you'll find fewer than 23 percent.14 That, coupled with the fact that church populations are aging in most mainstream denominations, and that in a recent survey of U.S. collegians 15 percent indicated no religious preference,15 shows that churches are headed for tough times, especially in the Western world. As you enter the third millennium, you'll be part of the generations that spark a global renaissance, navigate a superinformation community of technology with a crystal-clear digital connection, and find yourself in an era of intense individuality directed toward common goals. If you're packing, leave the canned goods, cases of bleach, and gas lamps at home. But Celente suggests taking the software: attitudes and ideas, programs, disciplines, nutritional health awareness, pioneering voluntary simplicity, self-responsibility, and the quest for higher consciousness.16 So, are you ready for the new millennium and all that it will mean to your life? Well, then, welcome. 1 Gerald Celente, Trends
2000: How to Prepare for and Profit From the Changes of the 21st
Century (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1997). Celeste Ryan works to raise public awareness of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America, as its media relations manager and public information officer. |
evokes a familiar scene, one you wish you didn't have
to witness each weekday afternoon. Michael, your son fresh from a
nearby home-based preschool, who moments earlier was relaying
compelling details about a classmate's show-and-tell presentation that
involved his father, a businessman who lives in Japan, via videophone,
is now singing an all too often aired commercial and begging, if not
demanding, that you take him to McDonald's.
